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MOTHER BICKERDYKE IN 1896 



iMntlf^r Itrk^rbgk^ 



AS 1 KNEW HER 



By FLORENCE SHAW KELLOGG 

With an Introduction by 

JENKIN LLOYD JONES 



"A full rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self sacrifice. 
How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee beneath the low, green tent 
Whose curtain never outward swings." 

— Whitiier. 



UNITY PUBLISHING COMPANY 

The Abraham Lincoln Centre 

CHICAGO 
1907 



UBRARY of CONGRESS f 

Two OooJes Rocelvud I 

JUL 115 '907 J 
0«ovn«rW Ertfy 

<X ncn No. 

COPY ij. I 



]' G ^ 



Copyright 1907 
UNITY PUBLISHING COMPANY 



To 
JENKIN LLOYD JONES 

whose faithful friendship made it possible, this 
httle book is affectionately dedicated by 

THE AUTHOR 
Fay, Kansas, 1907 



CONTENTS. 

Chapter. Page. 

Introduction 7 

I. The First Call 21 

11. School Days and After . 29 

III. The Son's Letter 35 

IV. Work Among the Sick and Poor 41 

V. With Her at .Home 47 

VI. Stories of Army Life . 53 

VII. Stories of Service 59 

VIII. Still With the Army 71 

IX. In New York and Elsewhere 81 

X. The Next Thing 87 

XL Back from California ... . 93 

XII. Letter of a Mutual Friend 99 

XIII. The Eightieth Birthday 103 

XIV. The Last Years iii 

XV. Good-Bye to Earth 117 

XVI. Honor to Mother Bickerdyke 123 

XVII. The Religious Life 129 

XVIII. Old Letters 135 

XIX. Letters from the Front 143 

XX. Other Letters 151 

XXI. In Which We Say Good-Bye 157 

Appendix. 

Dedication of Mother Bickerdyke's Monument.. . 163 

Bibliography 175 



INTBOBVCTION. 

War is a corporate expression of the barbaric element still 
left in civilization. It witnesses to the ignorance, weakness 
and wickedness of man. Poor human nature, distrustful of its 
diviner leadings, unmindful of the heavenly guiding, rushes to 
war. There has never been a war that might not have been 
avoided had the saner counsels of the wise obtained. 

Frankly admitting, then, that the sword, bullet and bayonet 
are but extensions of the fang, claw and horn, it readily 
follows that the time is coming when, like their brute fore- 
runners, they will gradually become ornamental traditions, 
then linger awhile as abortions until they are finally abolished 
forever. 

Meanwhile we must as frankly admit that there are condi- 
tions more dire than war; that liberty, justice and honor are 
more valuable than life, and that when these cannot be vv^on or 
maintained in life or by living, they must be purchased by 
the blood of the noblest, the lives of the best. There can 
be but one supreme justification for war, viz., liberty and the 
just chances that go therewith. That war, then, is the noblest 
that secures the highest results in these directions. 

Judged by these tests, the noblest struggle ever waged on 
battlefield was that for the freedom of the slave and the 
preservation of the American republic in the years 1861-65 
A. D. Measured by the number and gauged by the intelli- 
gence, courage, self-denial and humanitarian motives as well 
as by the momentous results, this war stands very near the 
shining line where war must cease. For war is to cease, not 
because it becomes too expensive, too terrible, or so triumphant 
that none dare challenge it, but because human nature will 
become too noble ; men will grow too wise and women too in- 
fluential to resort to such coarse, cruel and wasteful settle- 
ment of disputes which, settled by such methods, leave the 
main struggle still to be waged and the ultimate result still 
to be achieved. 

In round numbers there were enlisted in the service of the 
Union from 1861- '65 about 2,850,000 souls. Of these, 56,000 
were killed on the battlefield, 219,000 died of wounds and dis- 
ease in military hospitals ; it is estimated that 200,000 were 
permanently crippled or otherwise disabled; 134,000 of these 
soldiers sleep in nameless graves ; 180,000 colored men enlisted 
in this army and fought in their own behalf; 30,000 of these 
died in the service, — all this that 4,000,000 human beings 
might no longer be enslaved, bought and sold as so many sheep 
and cattle by any ''superior" race; and further, that their' 
posterity might forever be free from this bondage, and that 



8 INTBODUCTION. 

democracy in its highest experiment and fullest development 
should have continued chance to make good the claims set 
forth in the Declaration of Independence that ''all men are 
created free and equal" in their right to ''life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. ' ' 

Perhaps half as many men were enlisted on the other side, 
and it is now clearly seen that they also were largely actuated 
by high motives and swayed by noble inspirations. They, too, 
had "Liberty!" for their rallying cry; they, too, were 
valorous for home and for justice; they, too, died bravely 
with a human cry upon their lips and a human cause warm- 
ing their hearts. The only irreconcilable difference between 
the two armies was that they who rose in rebellion against 
the Union had not yet learned that soul is not a thing of 
color; that the black-skinned children of the All Father were 
human; that the dusky mother-heart was still motherly, and 
that God's best name is "Father" in Africa, as in Europe 
or in America; that race lines when surveyed by the 
millenniums of human history and the cosmic aeons become 
superficial, incidental accompaniments to the great fundamental 
unity that is proved by an identity of hopes, fears, loves, 
hates, strengths, weaknesses, and, above all, tendencies and 
aspirations. 

This primal mistake of the revolutionists denied for them 
the finer inspirations that go with the strong who fight for the 
weak, the highest courage and power of the noblest, — noblesse 
oblige! 

The crowning achievement of that war was a solution that 
commended itself to the ultimate judgment, and, still more, 
related itself to the ultimate well being of the vanquished as 
well as the vanquisher, as the hasty flight of the short forty 
years that have already intervened clearly proves. 

But oh, the horrible price! The cost of it all! This can- 
not be brought home to us by recounting the mighty aggrega- 
tion of figures, or dealing in sweeping generalities. 

More impressive than these figures and more persuasive than 
any generalities is the sight of a crippled veteran, and still 
more so the study of a broken home circle. 

As a contribution to this study, there is offered here the 
story of one woman 's life, a plain widow who, without leisure, 
social standing, political or church influence, came to be the 
peer, oftentimes the terror, of high officials, the admiration of 
generals, the recipient of great trusts, the distributor of un- 
counted treasure, the admiration, the love, the consolation and 
inspiration of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who learned to 
give her the pre-eminent word of the heart — "Mother." 

On the eighth day of November, 1901, in her far away 
western home at Bunker Hill, Kansas, Mary A. Bickerdyke 
passed to her rest in the eighty-fourth year of her age. 

This book is one more attempt to tell the story of this 
woman's life, but notwithstanding the loving loyalty, the close 



INTEODUCTJON. 9 

acquaintance, and the skillful movement of the pen, guided by 
high appreciation of the work as well as of the worker, the 
story is necessarily inadequately told. It must ever be so. 
The deepest experiences of the human soul, the highest achieve- 
ments of the human will, the divinest revealments of the 
human heart, ever baffle the maker of sentences, ever escape 
the printed page. A mother's kiss, the desolation of a dis- 
couraged man, the tears of a home-sick boy, are beyond the 
reach of all the arts. Poetry, painting, statuary, music, are 
all inadequate to the task. 

But these pages will show that the best blood America can 
boast flowed in her veins; that the Mayflower contributed to 
the heirlooms of her family ; that her maternal grandfather 
was a bare-footed soldier boy of sixteen at the battle of 
Bunker Hill ; that he was the one who kept the fires burning 
on the shore when Washington crossed the Delaware; that he 
kept his place in the ranks through the seven years of war ; 
that he was the recipient of a pair of socks from the hand 
of Martha Washington, a pair of her own knitting, and that 
the old Commander recognized and greeted the faithful fol- 
lower who had ridden on his black stallion all the way from 
Ohio to salute him. It will also be se"en that the blood of 
her paternal grandfather mingled with that of Mary Ball, the 
mother of Washington. 

The story will tell how this nobly born woman was orphaned 
when but seventeen months old, on the pioneer line of the 
then new state of Ohio, where she fondled her pets, learned to 
break colts, evolved the dress out of flax and the wool grown 
in the clearing, and became an eager student in the log school- 
house with its puncheon seats and goose-quill pens. At six- 
teen she won her way to that splendid nursery of stalwarts — 
Oberlin College. The great President, Charles Finney, put his 
stamp upon her; he taught her to believe 'Hhat woman had a 
right to do anything she was fitted for, and that a negro had 
a right to an equal chance in the race of life. ' ' And he fur- 
ther taught her that to assert these rights was one of the 
cardinal virtues. 

Six weeks before her completion of the four years' course an 
epidemic of fever called her home. Cholera was raging in 
Cincinnati; there was a call for nurses, and Mary Ball entered 
upon her life work, unconsciously receiving the training that 
was to place her unquestionably at the head of that long and 
benignant line of nurses that lit up the lurid battle pages of 
the awful war with angel radiance. Mary Safford, Mrs. 
Porter, Louisa Alcott, Clara Barton, Mary A. Livermore, are 
in that shining line. But judged by the continuous service, 
the scope and extent of her work and her subsequent place 
in the affections of the soldier and the annals of the northern 
army, Mary A. Bicker dyke leads them all. 

This story will tell how, in 1847, Bishop Mcllvane of Cin- 
cinnati solemnized the vows that made her a home-maker and 



10 INTEODUCTION. 

inducted her into that apprenticeship of motherhood that was 
to find so capacious a fulfillment. Four children adopted by 
marriage, two welcomed through the gates of birth, two home- 
less nephews, with occasional relays of orphans from the Five 
Point Mission of New York, sent westward, mark her appren- 
ticeship. 

In 1856 the waning health of her husband brought them to 
a new home near Galesburg, Illinois. Two years later she was 
left the sole head of the family, poor in everything except the 
tremendous energy of the mother whose work ranged from 
the wash-tub to the sick chamber. 

In 1861 the Galesburg City Directory contained the entry: 

' ' Mary A. Bickerdyke, widow of Eobert, botanic physician, 
office and residence Prairie street. ' ' 

Then the storm broke ; the war came, and Lincoln 's first 
75,000 volunteers were marching southward. The Commandant 
at Cairo found himself overwhelmed with a lot of raw, fever- 
smitten, home-sick soldiers. A cry for help was read one Sun- 
day morning by Dr. Edward Beecher, Pastor of the Con- 
gregational church at Galesburg, of which she was a member. 
Five hundred dollars' worth of sanitary stores were con- 
tributed that morning, and an unnumbered hundred-thousand 
dollars ' worth of soul in the person of Mary A. Bickerdyke 
were hurried southward. Mary Safi'ord, the * ' Cairo Angel, ' ' 
was already at work, and there began the career of army 
nurse that did not end until the last soldier was discharged 
from the Springfield hospital in 1866. 

It is not fitting that the Introduction should anticipate the 
text that is to follow, but the story is so fascinating, so strong, 
aye, so sweet and tender, that it is hard to resist the tempta- 
tion to anticipate the telling. 

Her first move seems to have been for bath-tubs. This is 
most significant. The pile of empty hogsheads were sawed in 
two, and every sick soldier had a bath. Then began the 
benign stream of clean linen that for five years flowed through 
her hands for the salvation of body and the renewal of soul. 

The citizens of Cairo had fitted up a diet kitchen ; she as- 
sumed command, a place to which she was called by divine 
fitness. Here also began her battle with official red tape, in- 
competency and cupidity, which lasted through the five years. 

The delicacies and comforts she controlled here were sore 
temptations to the unscrupulous. Once she found a '^ sani- 
tary" shirt on a luckless lieutenant whom she proceeded to 
disrobe, to the amusement of his companions. ' * Now, you 
rascal, let's see what you'll steal next!" and she left him 
in his luckless plight. 

Missing delicacies from her pantry, some dried peaches were 
stewed one day and left to cool on the kitchen table. In due 
time there was distress among the waiters, stewards and ward- 
masters. * * Umph, umph, so peaches don 't agree with you, eh ? 



INTEODUCTION. . 11 

You may be worse off next time you eat stolen sauce; there 
will be ratsbane in it some night! " 

A refrigerator with a lock on it was ordered from the north. 
One night the lock was broken and the next morning there was 
a cook in the guardhouse. Thus it was all along the line. 

''By whose authority are you here?" said a surgeon to her. 

''I am here in obedience to the Lord God Almighty! Have 
you any higher authority? Stand out of my way!" was the 
answer. 

But this divine authority was soon certified to by the neces- 
sary mundane officials. All right-minded surgeons soon begged 
for her assistance, and those high in command saluted her. 

''Who is the complainant?" asked General Sherman of an 
officer with a grievance. 

' ' That meddlesome old woman from the north, ' ' was the 
reply. 

' ' Oh, well, I can do nothing for you ; she outranks me, ' ' 
said the general. 

The following pass was issued : ' ' All guards, pickets and 
military authorities will pass and re-pass Mrs. Mary A. Bicker- 
dyke from any point within the lines, and all military railroads 
and chartered steamboats will grant her free transportation. 
By order of General U. S. Grant. ' ' 

Early in her career she was active with this document. 
Under special stress General Sherman gave orders that no 
civilian or sanitary stores should be transported on a railroad 
until further orders. 

' ' How came you here against orders ? ' ' said the surprised 
General. 

"Because I have a pass from General Grant," was the 
response. 

' ' Scurvy is showing itself in the front ; the soldiers need the 
vegetable diet; there is plenty at Nashville; I want permission 
to bring some to the front. ' ' 

The General was relenting. ' ' I will take it up w^ith you 
tomorrow. ' ' 

' ' No you don 't, General Sherman. What 's the use of fool- 
ing? Give me orders for two carloads a day from Nashville 
south, right now, and I will be satisfied. ' ' 

The General relented just then, and soon she was dis- 
tributing potatoes and onions up and down the railroad line 
from Huntsville to Chattanooga, herself riding among the bar- 
rels, seeing that the supplies w^ere distributed among the boys. 

Thus was it ever. Independent, aggressive, when necessary 
defiant, a terror to the selfish and the arbitrary, but gentle 
as a mother to her babe to the suffering and the dependent. 

At this distance all will take her tenderness for granted. 
Her mother-heart is proved by the touch with which heaven 



12 . INTEODUCTION. 

endowed her, by the loving suffrage of thousands of the boys 
whom she had nursed back to life, wooed out of home-sickness 
into cheerfulness, shamed out of despondency into courage, 
saved in spite of enemies' bullets or the more menacing dis- 
couragement of the camp. 

I wish I might with equal emphasis persuade the reader of 
the splendid energy, the great executive ability, the mighty 
captaincy of this woman. The practical sagacity that revealed 
itself at Cairo never deserted her. Her hospital boat was 
the first to land at Pittsburgh Landing after the battle of 
Shiloh when the crafts of war were crude, and there seemed to 
be lint and bandages, clean linen and hot coffee, sugar and 
milk, wherever she went. 

Mother Bickerdyke was the great laundress of the army; her 
washing camps were a sight to behold. One of the early ship- 
ments from Chicago consisted of great kettles, mangles and 
other material for laundering on a large scale. She never 
lacked help ; every camp swarmed with contrabands that were 
as wax to her hands. Every soldier, convalescent or otherwise, 
from private to colonel, was glad of any detail that would 
enable him to help Mother Bickerdyke. At Corinth, Memphis, 
Vicksburg, Big Black, Chattanooga, Atlanta, I was witness to 
her washers, her cooks, her traveling bakers, and her exhaust- 
less supply of linen. 

When Sherman cast off from Atlanta towards the sea he 
sent her around via Louisville with orders to meet him via 
the Atlantic ocean. At Baltimore her loaded ship was waiting 
for the news; she heard the click of the telegraph about as 
soon as it was heard at Washington, and the boat cast off. 
But at Wilmington she met a gaunt band of Andersonville 
prisoners, the sorriest sight of the w^ar. She stayed to soothe 
and to see that they were all provided for before proceeding 
to meet her Chief. 

Thus was it ever. Her inventiveness, her power to execute, 
her immediateness, made her the great general she was. Had 
she worn trousers and had she been released from this more 
benign generalship, she would undoubtedly have made a great 
commander. She was never without resources. 

Eeturning to her hospital late one night she found that the 
surgeon-in-chief had ordered all the contrabands beyond hos- 
pital limits. It was a stroke at her power. The night was 
dark and stormy; the streets of Memphis were unlighted; 
danger lurked everywhere, but she summoned her ''Handy 
Andy ' ' and the mules. ' ' Come, ' ' she said to Mrs. Livermore, 
' ' we must find General Hurlbut 's headquarters. ' ' When 
Mrs. Livermore urged the folly and danger of undertaking 
such a night journey, ''Well, if you are such a coward Andy 
and I will go alone," was the reply. But Mrs. Livermore was 
no coward, and she went along. They floundered through the 
black streets, through rain and mud, passing guards without 
countersign, until they found a night officer whom they over- 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

ruled and he gave them the countersign. It was away after 
midnight when they reached the headquarters. The General 
was in bed, but he was routed out, and by the light of the 
single lantern the two w^omen and the trusty driver found 
their w^ay back with the order authorizing Mother Bickerdyke 
to retain the use of such contraband service at the hospital 
as she wished as long as she pleased. Of course there was 
a scene next morning, but it was not Mother Bickerdyke that 
went to the wall. 

.When Logan's soldiers were approaching Washington for 
the grand review, the inefficiency of the commissary depart- 
ment left the men hungry. General Logan telegraphed 
Mother Bickerdyke; she telegraphed Eev. Dr, Bellows of New 
York, ' ' Logan 's troops coming in hungry ; no supplies. ' ' The 
dispatch reached the president of the Sanitary Commission 
on Sunday morning and he read it in his church to the as- 
sembled congregation and answered, * ' Supplies coming. ' ' At 
five 'clock that afternoon five cars loaded with crackers 
started from New York to Washington. It came too late, 
the officer said, for distribution that night. ''Nonsense! " said 
Mother Bickerdyke, ' ' the boys are hungry and they are going 
to have their supper. ' ' She ordered up the wagons, directed 
her trains to where the boys were ready to receive her, as 
ever, with their cheers, their tears and their blessings. 

After the grand review she followed Logan back to the 
West. At Louisville she heard of soldiers down on the 
Mississippi river dying of scurvy, needing potatoes and onions. 
That night she arranged with the captain, who was to leave 
the levee early in the morning, to take a supply of potatoes 
along. A pitiless rain storm was deluging Louisville that 
morning. The captain, assuming that Mother Bickerdyke 
would not attempt to bring potatoes in such a storm, cast off 
a few minutes before time. He was in midstream when she 
with her wagons and her colored attendants hove in sight. 
The driver halted and said, ''It is too late!" 

"It is not too late!" she said, "that captain has got to 
come back." 

Into the middle of the muddy street and the driving rain 
she jumped and stood waving her shaker bonnet with such 
imperative command that no Captain dared disobey. He re- 
turned, and in an apologetic tone said, "I didn't think you 
could get here. ' ' The reply was characteristic, — ' ' Didn 't I 
tell you I would?" 

Mother Bickerdyke 's work was not confined to the front. 
Over and over again, as will be seen in this narrative, she 
flew northward, sometimes by the connivance of friends who 
tried to make her rest. Her headquarters when she came 
north were generally at the home of Mary Livermore in Chi- 
cago. Here Chicago ladies, as is their wont, would try to do 
her honor. They M'ould arrange for teas and receptions, but 
her reply was ever: 



14 INTBODUCIION. 

"This is no time for frolicking; there is a big war on 
hand. ' ' 

And she was out raising money, stimulating contributions, 
directing shipments, looking after the families of some of 
her ' ' boys, ' ' arranging for their orphaned children in schools, 
asylums and farms. Her great raid upon the farmers of 
northern Illinois, which enabled her in less than twenty days 
to carry 200 cows and upwards of a thousand laying hens 
to her sick camp of 15,000 souls in Memphis who, as she said, 
were trying to get nourishment out of ' ' secesh milk, ' ' half 
chalk and water, for which they were paying fifty cents a 
quart, has been told over and over again, but only those of 
us who were at the front can know the thrilling story, and 
we can never tell it. 

When the smallpox hospital was cleaned like the Augean 
stables by this woman who combined the courage and power 
of Hercules with the wisdom and dignity of Athene, when 
there were no more sick to need the milk and the eggs, the 
cows and the chickens were distributed among the families 
of her faithful contrabands on the island in the Mississippi 
to begin life on. 

My temptation to anticipate or repeat the post-bellum story 
of Mother Bickerdyke is not so great as it has been con- 
cerning her war triumphs, for of her army campaignings the 
present writer can truthfully say, — ' * much of which I have 
seen and a little of which I have been. ' ' 

Mother Bickerdyke was not one of the ' ' Old Soldiers ' ' 
who were content to spend the rest of their lives in ' ' shoulder- 
ing a crutch and showing how fields were won. ' ' 

Perhaps no one is better prepared to tell the story of Mother 
Bickerdyke after the war than is the author of this book. How 
close she has been to the adequate sources of information and 
how truthfully and skillfully she has used her material, we 
leave to the testimony of the grateful and delighted reader. 
But here again the real story, the post-bellum life of Mother 
Bickerdyke, can never adequately be told. Whether as Matron 
of the Home for the Friendless in Chicago, a position which 
she could not hold because she said she ' * could not walk around 
in a peck measure, " or as emigrant agent, encouraging the old 
soldiers to find homes on Kansas farms, or as distributor of a 
ten thousand dollar fund furnished by eastern railroads to the 
fire sufferers in Michigan -and Chicago in 1871, or in a four 
years' career as missionary among the poor in New York 
city, where she speaks of visiting hundreds of homes, but 
never making a prayer — a cake of soap, a comb and towel 
weie her first w^eapons — or as the founder of a school for 
neglected children on the Pacific coast, or hurrying to the 
relief of the locust-smitten farmers of Kansas — all the while 
the story is wonderful beyond telling, because it passes the 
comprehension of ordinary mortals. 



INTEODUCTION. 15 

All the while she was pension agent, with a roving com- 
mission, to help those who did not know how to help them- 
selves, to counsel those who had no money to pay for coun- 
selors. At last, twenty years after the war, she who had 
secured hundreds of thousands of dollars of pensions for 
others, became the object of solicitation on the part of her 
' ' Boys, ' ' and a movement was set on foot among the old 
soldiers to secure her a pension. The bill was introduced into 
the lower house by John D. Long of Massachusetts, and into 
the Senate by Senator Logan. It was reported upon by the 
committees with the most hearty endorsements, setting forth 
the fact that in the estimation of the competent she had done 
more work for the army than any brigadier general and had 
saved more lives than any one surgeon, and still, notwith- 
standing the high estimate, the heroic house committee recom- 
mended that the amount be cut down from fifty to twenty-five 
dollars per month. "That she got and nothing more!" 

How great the shame of it! How valiant the action of those 
public servants! How brave their guarding of the public 
treasury! Better not to scrutinize their votes when the 
"appropriation bill" was on its passage. 

The closing years of Mother Bickerdyke were serene ones, 
living with her son. Prof, James Eoger Bickerdyke, County 
Superintendent of Schools at Bunker Hill, Kansas, and when 
in the fullness of her years she fell asleep, her body was 
borne with loving hands to the old Galesburg home where, 
followed by a weeping multitude of old associates and neigh- 
bors, it was laid to rest beside the dust of husband and 
children. 

I have tried to keep the first person singular in the back- 
ground in this Introduction. I was a member of the Western 
army for three years. From 1862 to the end of the war I 
kept my place in the front line of the fighting column under 
Grant, Sherman and Logan, ' ' a high private in the rear 
rank ' ' of the Sixth Wisconsin Light Artillery. Early in the 
war I learned to call her ' ' Mother, ' ' and through all the 
succeeding years the title has become more real, more near 
and dear to me. 

My personal acquaintance with her began a few days after 
the battle of Corinth in October, 1862. I was a patient in 
the general hospital which she helped to move in the dead of 
night following the first day's engagement, while cannon balls 
shrieked overhead and not infrequently fell in the midst of 
tents and mules. I was a fever-smitten patient, weak and 
wasted, with an unwashed body, w^rapped in a coarse white 
flannel shirt, fouled by two weeks of fever. I can no better 
describe the touch of this angel hand than to quote from a 
letter which I sent to the great heart some seven years before 
she was mustered out of service. 

' ' At Corinth I was one of the helpless burdens in the gen- 
eral hospital, whom you assailed with helpful indignation be- 



16 INTEOD.VCTION. 

cause I did not ' stand up for my rights, ' when you found 
me in a dirty shirt and Avithout proper attendance. You 
scolded me soundly, threw me into a capacious clean night 
shirt, and slapped me around generally, but kept me in mind. 
Three or four days of your blessed abusiveness and irrepres- 
sible cheer turned the tide in favor of life." 

After this I often caught glimpses of her at Memphis, Vicks- 
burg, Huntsville; the last time I remember seeing her, she 
was silhouetted against the blackness of night by the blazing 
log fires on a cold December night near Chickamauga at the 
foot of Missionary Eidge, as we were returning from the pur- 
suit of Bragg 's army. 

Years after, when I saw Charlotte Cushman play the role 
of Walter Scott's ''Meg Merrilies, " I could but think of 
Mother Bickerdyke. Like Scott's heroine, interpreted by the 
great Queen of the Stage, Mother Bickerdyke 's spirit was so 
imposing that it exaggerated the height of her body; so flash- 
ing was her will that at times it concealed the tenderness 
in the depths of the blue eye; so decisive and quick were 
her words that you sometimes failed to detect promptly the 
geniality in her accents, the tender, loving tones in her voice. 

This word picture of her, given by a fellow townsman. Dr. 
Woodward, in the beginning of her nurse 's career in Cairo, 
will answer all the way through: 

''Let me describe my heroine: A large, heavy woman of 
forty-five years, strong as a man; muscles of iron; nerves of 
finest steel; sensitive, but self-reliant; kind and tender; seek- 
ing all for others, nothing for herself." 

During one of Mrs. Livermore 's earliest visits to the hos- 
pital on the battlefield she found men in tears because, they 
said, ' ' Mother Bickerdyke has gone down the river and we 
shall all die. ' ' A surgeon on one of the hospital boats, after 
the battle of Shiloh, said, ' ' On the deck and in the cabin the 
cry was 'Mother!' 'Mother!' 'Mother!' " 

Long after the close of the war she came all the way from 
California to attend an annual reunion of old soldiers. There 
was a disturbance at the back of the hall which the presiding 
ofiicer was unable to suppress. "Order! Order!" cried the 
President as he violently wielded his gavel. From the back of 
the hall came the retort, "Shut up yourself. Mother Bicker- 
dyke is here!" Then there was an impromptu adjournment. 
Strong men sobbed like children, embraced and caressed her 
as a child. The dear old mother with tears running down her 
face retorted, "Boys, how you behave! You ought to be 
ashamed of yourselves!" 

To the end, the old hands, though distorted by hard work 
and swollen by frequent poisonings from malignant wounds, 
the hands that had soothed unnumbered brows when hot with 
fever and closed thousands of dying eyes, the hands that com- 
posed the limbs and bathed the beautiful features of Gen- 
eral McPherson as she prepared the body of this nineteenth 



INTBODVCTION. 17 

century knight for its last journey to the stricken mother in 
Ohio, were helping and helpful hands. Fitting was the song 
''To Mother's Hands/' that was sung at her grave. Who 
once having felt their touch can ever forget them, still less 
describe them? 

And that voice — the voice that sounded like an angel's 
trumpet; the voice that often broke the silence and the 
solemnity of the hospital with the trembling, soothing notes 
of ' ' The Shining Shore, ' ' still rings in the ears of those who 
were softened by her vehemence, made gentle by her severity, 
strong in her courage. 

In religion as in medicine and politics, she was an Eclectic, 
communing now with Methodist and now with Presbyterian, 
Congregationalist or Unitarian as she ' ' happened to light on 
them," as she put it. Mary Livermore tells how she once 
asked her, "Why do you waste your strength on such a worth- 
less fellow at seventy-three '? ' ' Turning to her with a flash 
of her blue eye, she answered, ''Mary Livermore, I have a 
commission from the Lord God Almighty to do all I can for 
every miserable creature who comes in my way. He is always 
sure of two friends — God and me. ' ' 

Many years ago she sent her teacher son to intercept me 
at Topeka, Kansas, where I had gone to lecture before the 
State Teachers' Association, with instructions to bring me 
home with him. How the heart responded to the invitation! 
My spirit leapt towards the Kansas cottage, but the cruel 
fetters of circumstances^ the hard, cold ties of "previous en- 
gagements ' ' forbade. I vainly dreamed of the pleasure and 
pride of securing the dear Mother for my own platform, of 
presenting her to my own people, of seeing and hearing her in 
my own pulpit, and this was a pleasure to which she also 
keenly looked forward. But alas! the pleasure was not for 
her, and the privilege was not for me. A little over three 
years after her death I shaped my annual March escape from 
the inhospitable weather of Chicago in such a way that I 
might visit the Bunker Hill cottage and cultivate an intimacy 
with the faithful son whose life was so interwoven with the 
mother 's. But here again I was doomed to disappointment, 
for only three or four months before my arrival the beloved 
teacher and the loyal son had joined the great and good 
mother. 

In my disappointment I remembered that I was in the 
neighborhood of an old correspondent, one of the shut-in post- 
ofl&ce missionaries, a whilom contributor to Unity, A twelve- 
mile ride on a hard-riding broncho pony carried me from 
Eussell, the nearest railway station, to Fay postoffice, which 
consisted of a little one-story stone cottage home on a typical 
western ranch. My correspondent and her sturdy ranchman- 
husband waved their welcome from afar, and the good man 
climbed the hill to meet me. The greeting was as delightful 
to me as it was cordial on their part, but the delight was 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

changed to something like awe upon entering the attractive 
little room which w^as at once bedroom, parlor, library and 
sanctum. Hanging over the bed, upon which for many long 
years the house-bound invalid had lain, was a large crayon por- 
trait of Mother Bickerdyke, beautifully framed, natural as 
life. The old geniality radiated as of old. 

''Why, that is Mother Bickerdyke!" 

' ' Do you know her V 

"Why, I am one of her boys! I came hither in quest of 
her son; I was homesick for further tidings of her; another 
touch of her life!" 

My visit was of but a few short hours, for night found me 
again at the railway station, chasing the next engagement. 
But the stay was long enough to yield communion on many 
lines, to discover many points of comradeship with those brave 
home-makers who for many years had been toiling to make 
the desert blossom as the rose, to build on the wind-swept 
prairie a home from wdiich went forth the intelligence and 
consecration that shaped the laws of the great sun-flower 
state and touched its highways with culture and its community 
with the freedom that is devout and the devoutness that is 
free. 

But at no point did Ave find more comradeship than at the 
feet of Mother Bickerdyke, and before I left, mine hostess 
had re-aw^akened within her the abandoned purpose to write the 
story of "Mother Bickerdyke as I knew her," and the plan 
of first publishing it serially in the pages of Unity was an 
added inspiration, for Unity had been friend and companion 
to her through the long years of illness and isolation. 

The realization of this plan was necessarily accompanied by 
the delays and difficulties and the imperfections incident to 
amateur journalism, but here it is at last. Through the gener- 
osity of some friends of the soldier, we are permitted to 
present in book form the material that first appeared in the 
columns of Unity, essentially as it there appeared. Mrs. 
Kellogg has w^ritten the book out of her heart, and conse- 
quently every page is instinct with the fundamental element 
of literary grace and power, viz., sincerity and sympathetic 
earnestness. 

My old comrades of the army will, like myself, read the 
story with tear-dimmed eyes as w^e live over again the grue- 
some experiences, rough on the outside but touched with ten- 
derness within. And I hope that many of the sons and daugh- 
ters of the veterans, the children of more lenient circumstances, 
will read this story of Mother Bickerdyke and realize with what 
great price their liberty and their opportunity have been 
bought. 

And surely, some one sooner or later will be stirred by this 
version of the story by Mrs. Kellogg to search further, to read 
more widely, and out of greater leisure and the calmer per- 
spective of greater distances, to shape the story in better pro- 



INTRODUCTION. 



19 



portions and tell it more accurately, for the last estimate has 
not yet been made of Mother Bickerdyke. But, as already 
hinted, the best of the story can never be written, and they 
who, like Mrs. Kellogg, have basked in the sunshine of her 
radiant life, and, like the present writer, have known the heal- 
ing touch of her helpful presence, know most of the inde- 
scribable and have felt most of the unutterable. 

It is with great pleasure that I have intruded these intro- 
ductory Viords upon a tale that needs no introduction. 

May these peaceful blossoms grown by the rough husbandry 
of war hasten the time when war shall be no more. 



C^^t^ 




J^^M£^ 



Abraham Lincoln Centre, Chicago, April 5, 1907. 



■ 


g-jM ;''-':^ 


1ili# i' 


1 







Mother Bickerdyke's Birthplace at Mansfield, Ohio 



CHAPTER I. 

'^The beginning of a true friendship is an era in one's life 
— the beginning of a forever. ' ' 

THE FIRST CALL. 

A year ago when the Senior Editor spent one never- 
to-be-forgotten day in our ranch home here on the 
"Sun-kissed prairies of Kansas," I promised to tell the 
readers of Unity of Mother Bickerdyke as I knew 
her in the last ten years of her busy, care-filled life, 
during which she was the devoted home-maker for 
her bachelor son. Prof. J. R. Bickerdyke, who, in i88<S, 
was elected county superintendent of public instruc- 
tion of Russell County, and held that office through 
several terms. To his untiring efforts it is due that 



22 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

our schools are raised to a high level and set upon a 
solid basis of excellence and worth. Though his name 
was well known in the educational world, and he 
ranked as one of the best and most earnest educators 
of the state, he was her "baby" — her "Ji^™^y boy" — 
receiving in these years some measure of the care and 
petting he was obliged to forego when the call came 
to her and she went out to the larger, wider service 
among the ''boys in blue." 

The mutual love and devotion between mother and 
son was very beautiful. As he said "The sympathy 
between us is so close and complete that if mother 
gets sick, I am sick too, and if I am sick it makes her 
so. Mother and I suffer or rejoice together always." 
He was such a man as the world most needs, one we 
could ill afford to spare, and yet it seemed only nat- 
ural and most right and beautiful that in death they 
were not long divided. But three short years after 
her summons home — years in which he went bravely 
on with his work, but with ever a sense of loss and 
loneliness in his heart — but three such years and he, 
too, was called. Faith can picture the glad reunion 
and see them going on together there even as they 
did here, and all who love them must be glad for them 
now. 

He was only a little boy when she began her work 
as an army nurse. I have heard him tell how his boy- 
heart used to ache as she kissed him "good bye," and 
he watched, through tear-blinded eyes, for the last 
wave of her hand as the train bore her away, and 
how desolate and alone he felt as he went back to the 
school where she had arranged for a home for him 
during her absence. The memory of that time with 
the pain he bore bravely, being a worthy son of a 
brave mother, and all the years of separation from 
her, added much to the joy he felt in having her with 
him in the later years and helped to make them "one 
and inseparable." 

"Jimmy ought to get married," she told me, "I'm 
getting old and can't make his home what it ought to 



THE FIEST CALL. 23 

be ; but/' she added, and I can see yet the soft shining 
of her eyes as she spoke, ''he says 'there's no one Hke 
mother' for him, and he really doesn't seem to want 
anyone else while he has me." So the quiet years 
passed and no one came to change the close relation 
of mother and son. He was indeed "faithful unto 
death," and, in so far as he might, he joined gladly in 
all her plans and work for the relief of the sick and 
poor that were always with her. His salary was al- 
ways at her command, but, so large and ample were 
her charities, so little able was she to say "No" to any- 
one in need, that it, combined with the all too small 
and tardy pension finally granted her, was nearly all 
used for others while her own needs were set aside 
and so nearly forgotten by her that, but for friends 
who "looked out for her," she must sometimes have 
been in "sore straits," as she said, for her own apparel. 

It is not of the son, but of the mother, I would tell 
you, yet the two lives were so interwoven, so lovingly 
united in all the years of my acquaintance with her, I 
can scarce separate them, cr tell of the one without 
much mention of the other. 

Though she was for such long years a public char- 
acter, living before the scenes, known and loved of 
many, it was with her as with all true women, in the 
home that she was best known, best loved. Here it 
was that I found her, and here it is that I love best 
to think of her — a rare, strong woman, with her 
earthly pilgrimage nearly done, ripening for eternal 
life. Though I knew but the one son then, she told 
me of others, saying proudly, "I had four as noble 
sons and one as lovely daughter as were ever given 
a woman" — making no distinction between her own 
two sons and her stepchildren. Right here I want to 
speak of what I have somewhere read about her saying 
that she "really believed" her husband (who died two 
years before the war began) would have lived longer 
if he had not "worn himself out trying to boss her" — 
that "he wanted her to do everything his way" and 
the like. I cannot believe this. I have heard her 



24 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

speak of her husband many times, but never in any 
but terms of love and praise. She gave me always to 
understand that her married life was happy and satis- 
fying. Had it been otherwise would she have felt such 
longing that her grave should be by the side of his? 
Would one of her last expressed wishes have been 
that this should be ? No ! no ! it could not be true ! 
Else had her voice never had such proud, tender 
tones when she said "my husband." Hers were not 
the memories of a wife who was "bossed," but in- 
stead those of one who knew the joys of a true mar- 
riage — a loving companionship one with the other. 
Of all the children but one son is still on earth — of 
him we shall hear more later. 

I had known Mother Bickerdyke by report for many 
years, my first definite knowledge of her being gained 
from two sketches that told of her life and her work 
in the army, published in Arthur's Home Magazine, 
in 1879, I think it was. Being only a little girl away 
back among the hills of Chautauqua County, New 
York, during the war I had known nothing of her 
then. Later, after coming to Kansas to live, I had 
gazed with reverent admiration at her as she sat upon 
the platform among the "good and great" — with none 
better or greater than she was — at soldiers' reunions 
and at Decoration Day exercises. I had worshiped at 
her shrine from afar for years, but it was not until 
New Year's day 1891 that I met her face to face, and 
felt the clasp of her honest hand. She was living 
then with her son at Russell, our county seat. I had 
gone in from the ranch to spend a few days there with 
a friend. The two homes were near together and 
my friend was a close friend of Mother Bickerdyke's. 
It was a warm, beautiful morning and I, with a light 
shawl thrown over my head, was out in the yard en- 
joying the sunshine and the balmy air. My friend, 
coming to the door and seeing me there, called out, 
"Why don't you run over and say 'Happy New Year' 
to Mother Bickerdyke?" 



THE FIEST CALL. 25 

*'Just as I am?" I asked, woman-like, thinking first 
of my unceremonious dress. *'Oh, yes; she will like 
you better so than she would if you were more for- 
mal/' was the reply, and a moment later I was knock- 
ing at the door at which no one ever knocked in vain. 
It was opened by the dear old mother herself, who, 
upon mention of my name, graciously told me she had 
often heard of me through our many mutual friends. 
With my hand still held in hers she drew me through 
the hall and into her plainly furnished but cosy and 
home-like sitting room, and soon we were visiting as 
earnest women ever do visit one with the other. I 
noticed then, as at each subsequent meeting with her, 
how instantly I felt at ease in her presence ; there was 
a certain graciousness and kindness of manner in all 
she said and did that forbade any embarrassing thought 
of difference in age, rank or condition. Though my 
heart and mind were full with the memory of all she 
was — of the work she had done and was still doing — 
and I felt a great reverence for her, she would not 
then or ever allow it to hinder the free interchange 
of thought and speech. It was the woman — the 
mother — who met me, not the noted public worker — 
and the woman within me responded easily, naturally, 
to her touch. The mention of my two noble brothers, 
who fell upon the battlefields of Virginia, was a fur- 
ther "open sesame" to her heart, and when, at parting, 
she kissed me even as a mother might, I felt it was of 
them she thought — for them it was given, for her love 
for the soldier boys was almost greater than the love 
of a mother for her child. Always after, at meeting 
and at parting she kissed me. Whether she did this 
generally with others I do not know. I only know 
this tenderness never failed me, and the memory of it 
is a blessing to me now — a sacrament that helps to 
keep my "lips from speaking guile" and consecrates 
them to truth and purity. 

It was a happy hour I spent with her then. Though 
many visits came afterwards none were ever quite like 
this. It was one of the "blessed first times," of which 



26 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

Holland used to tell us, never to be quite duplicated. 
What did we talk about? you ask. What did we not 
talk about! Of life and love, of home and war, of 
the work she had done — of which she spoke unre- 
servedly when once the subject was introduced, but 
she did not introduce it, and spoke of it always as if 
any woman could have done the same if so minded, 
and under like circumstances. I had heard that she 
was writing her Hfe-story and asked about it. "Bless 
you no ! I'm not writing it at all. There's been plenty 
written about me now. I have no time to write a 
book, and if I had, I shouldn't do it. I've too good 
an opinion of human nature to believe folks want to 
waste time reading what I could write," and she 
laughed in that hearty way that brought always an an- 
swering laugh from the one hearing it. ''What I have 
done," she continued, "I have done. It doesn't need 
to be written up. My boys (as she always called the 
soldiers) know what I have done, and that's enough." 

But it is not "enough." All the world should know 
of her brave, untiring work, of her self-sacrifice so 
complete as to be almost self-effacement ; of the long, 
weary marches she followed, and how like a good 
angel she appeared in camp and hospital and upon the 
field of battle; an angel of mercy to the suffering, but 
an angel of accusation and of wrath to those who 
would in any way impose upon her charges or hinder 
her with too much official red tape. This red tape she 
cut with determined hand, and went resolutely on with 
her work of giving comfort to the sick and bringing 
order and thrift where before had been disorder and, 
as she styled it, "dilly-dallying" with which she had 
no patience. She was a law unto herself "with a com- 
mission from God," as she said with reverence. 
Though never lacking in womanly tenderness where 
tenderness would avail she had a resolution and a de- 
termination that would not brook defeat^ — ^to her there 
was no such word as fail — no looking weakly back 
when once she had set her hand to the plow and made 
up her mind a given thing should be done. 



THE FIRST CALL. 27 

That the soldiers felt her tenderness is proved by the 
name — Mother — they gave her. Indeed she was 
Mother Bickerdyke to us all — to soldier and civilian, to 
men, women and children alike. She prized this dear 
name as she did no other. It was the brightest gem 
in her crown of womanhood. 

With her at the time of my first call was an unfor- 
tunate feeble-minded little daughter of an old soldier 
who lived some twenty or more miles out in the coun- 
try. There Mother Bickerdyke had found her and 
bringing her to her own home was busily at work 
with preparations to send her to a school for such as 
she was. She introduced the child to me as "Our 
Flora," telling me at the same time "She is a good 
little girl, and very fond of music. She has some 
strong points. I think, under the right conditions, she 
will grow to be a strong, good woman, and I am go- 
ing to put her where she will have a chance." That 
was ever her way — to help each one to be placed 
"under right conditions" and "to have a chance." All 
she did was done in a spirit of good will and helpful- 
ness. "I do not work for money," she told me. The 
thought that anything she did, any story told of her, 
should be coined into money was repulsive to her — 
this dear old mother who ever seemed 

"Lifted by something over life 
To power and service. ' ' 



CHAPTER 11. 

SCHOOL DAYS AND AFTER. 

''Rest is not quitting the busy career, 

Rest is the fitting of self to one's sphere. 
'Tis loving and serving the highest and best, 
'Tis onward unswerving; and this is true rest." 

Judged by this standard, Mother Bickerdyke had al- 
ways ''true rest," for in no other could we find a bet- 
ter "fitting of self to one's sphere." I used to think 
of the Bible words, "Thou art called to the kingdom 
for such a time as this," as I watched her and thought 
of the ceaseless activities of her life. I loved to hear 
her talk of her girlhood days "on the old Ball farm," 
back in Knox county, Ohio, where she lived the free, 
wholesome life of a country girl, with all of the ani- 
mals on the farm for pets and companions. It was 
there she laid the strong foundations of physical be- 
ing ; there that she gathered up a rich store of thought 
and knowledge — living, as every true child of the coun- 
try does live, close to the great throbbing heart of Na- 
ture — learning her secrets and drinking deep at her in- 
exhaustible founts of health and wisdom. Here she 
dreamed her sweet girl dreams of life and love while 

''The world was all before her where to choose. 
Reason her guard and Providence her guide." 

Here she began her school education in the log 
school-house with "puncheon seats" and "goose quill 
pens," with teachers who would undoubtedly find it 
hard to get the necessary certificates in these progres- 
sive days, but who laid great stress on the mastery of 
the "three R's"— "readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic"— with 
"spellin' " thrown in as a needed accomplishment, that 
might or might not prove useful in coming years. 
Mary Ball, as she was then, must have been a merry, 



30 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

fun-loving girl, one who would have her share in all 
the "good times" around her, and yet we can never 
think of her as neglecting any chance for improve- 
ment, or failing in any duty that was hers, for, with 
all her love of fun and merriment, her heart and con- 
science were true and tender ever. And her strong 
sense of right and justice would keep her ''up to the 
mark" always. 

At comparatively an early age she entered Oberlin 
College — that blessed haven of learning for so .many 
noble women of that time, open alike to the rich and 
the poor, to women as to men, to black as to white — as 
but few such institutions were at that time. 

"There have been a great many lies told and written 
about me," Mrs. Bickerdyke said to me, but the only 
one I ever knew her really to resent and be distressed , 

about was the one so generally circulated and believed , 

among those who never met her, that she was an un- t 

educated, illiterate woman — one to whom the world of 
books and of schools was unknown — or nearly so. 
Especially was she hurt that Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, 
in "My Story of the War," seemed so to depict her. 
"Mary Livermore knew better than that," she told me. 
'T can't understand why she wrote as she did" — ^and 
neither can any of us, though all who knew Mrs. Liv- 
ermore, either by reputation and printed word, or per- 
sonally, will surely acquit her of any intention to wrong 
one whom she held in such high esteem, and with 
whom she was a faithful co-worker in many a weary 
day of hospital service, and upon the field among the 
suffering "boys in blue," a woman of whom she 
wrote in a private letter dated at Melrose, Mass., June 
I, 1886: "No woman during the war has equaled you 
in varied and needed and useful service to our sick and 
wounded soldiers." Mrs. Livermore is but one among 
several who, in writing of Mrs. Bickerdyke, gives the 
impression that she was uneducated. I remember that 
in the articles in Arthur's Home Magazine where I first 
read of her, she was spoken of as an illiterate woman 
who, after her widowhood, supported her family by 
taking in washing. No one who knew her would 



SCHOOL DAYS AND AFTER. 31 

doubt her willingness to do this or any other honest 
work had it been necessary, for she knew in very truth 
that all work was good if done in. the right spirit. She 
knew 

"Who sweeps a room as to God's law 
Makes that and the action fine/' 

and was fearless in doing whatever came to her hand 
to be done. But it was not necessary for her to bend 
over the wash tub, or to do any like work to support 
her family. And so far was she from illiteracy that 
she lacked but a few short weeks of graduating with 
honors at Oberlin. An epidemic of fever breaking 
out there sent her home just before the close of her 
college course, and her removal to another part of the 
state a little later prevented a return. But lack- 
ing all this, knowing nothing of schools or colleges, 
she must have been of cultured mind, educated in the 
best meaning of the word, for she learned of every- 
thing with which she came in contact — of nature and 
of life, of men, women and children — of the sun-rises 
and the sun-sets — of the coming and the going of the 
seasons. All was "grist" to her — ^^all taught her of life 
and its meaning. Of an open mind, as of open hand 
— far seeing and receptive, she was ever learning, ever 
growing in depth and strength of character. But she 
knew of books and of the writers of books, and was 
at home in the drawing rooms of the educated and cul- 
tured as surely as in the hospital tent and the humble 
cottage of the poor. Some one has written of her 
"disregard of the king's English," but this is wronging 
her. There was a certain bluntness of speech in her, a 
disposition to avoid needless "frills and furbelows," as 
she would say, both in her conversation and in her 
dress — with no display of what "Hosea Biglow" styl-^s 
"book froth" — no bombast or vulgarity, and certainly 
no "disregard" or violation of "the king's English." 
Her's was an active life, far removed from the quiet of 
books and meditation, but she loved good books and 
all that went to the making of a full well-rounded, 
well-informed character, and there was a great charm 



32 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

in her conversation, a something that told of reserve 
force and depths untouched below^. Though she gave 
freely of that that w^as within her, she did not exhaust 
herself or her theme. She v^^as ever plain and direct 
of speech, simple and unassuming in bearing, unless 
when in combat with wrong, when she became a very 
Nemesis, pursuing the wrong doer with relentless 
force, nor rested until, so far as lay in her power, jus- 
tice was done. She stood always bravely, unflinch- 
ingly for what she believed to be right, and, truly, her 
judgment was seldom at fault, and she was seldom 
vanquished. As she once told an hospital officer who 
was opposing some of her efforts for the comfort of 
her "boys," "You better not get into a row with me, 
for whenever anybody does one of us always goes to 
the wall — and it is never me." 
She 

"Knew the depth and knew the height. 
The bounds of darkness and of light; 
And he who these extremes has seen 
Must needs know all that lies between. ' ' 

And this she did, this brave-hearted, resolute woman, 
to whom all around her instinctively turned in need 
and in sorrow, and for whom she had ever the right 
word of love and of encouragement. The clasp of her 
hand revealed her strength and determination, the 
sound of her voice gave inspiration and hope and the 
sight of her face so deeply stamped with the fine, ten- 
der yet strong lines of character, the eternal brooding 
motherhood that lay in the shining depth of her blue 
eyes — ah, who that has felt, heard and seen all this can 
forget it? Who but recalls it all with joy and grati- 
tude now that she is away? 

How little she could have thought in her school days 
of the work she was to do — the large place she was to 
fill in the hearts and homes of her countrymen and in 
our national history ! Nor could she once have thought 
that she was to be a household saint, the mention of 
whose name would bring a fervent "God bless her" 
from thousands of grateful hearts. Yet she was a very 



SCHOOL DAYS AND AFTER. 33 

human saint, not one to be set upon a pedestal and wor- 
shiped from afar, but one sharing in our full humanity 
with all its joys and its sorrows, and whose experience 
had taught her how to be helpful in the experiences of 
others. That she was sometimes imposed upon did not 
deter her in her good work. She was one who would 
rather trust all and be sometimes deceived than to 
wound any one by doubting too much. She was quick 
to decide and to act. While others were vaguely 
wondering over some social need or problem, she had 
found a way and gone straight to the need with sure 
supply. Though her work was chiefly among the old 
soldiers and their families, she by no means confined 
herself to them, but gave and gave, and gave wherever 
there was need, gave not of her money alone, but still 
more lavishly of herself. She must have felt with 
Lowell "The gift without the giver is bare." She 
never wasted life in doubts or fears, but spent herself 
on the work before her, knowing this was the best 
preparation for the work that might be given in the 
future. She lived in the now — lived one day at a time, 
wisely and well. She had a noble scorn of all things 
mean and low, and yet a rare gift of separating the sin 
from the sinner and, while condemning the one, would 
help to save the other. As she once said, ''Every mis- 
erable sinner that comes my way is sure of two friends 
— God and me." Who can tell how many a poor life 
has been saved from utter wreck, how many a discour- 
aged, despondent one has been aroused and given a 
new and stronger hope — a firmer grasp on things both 
material and spiritual by this combination of "God 
and me?" Whatever one's faith in God may be there 
come times when only the human touch can help — 
when we must have that to keep fast hold upon the 
other — when God's love must be seen in human love. 
The coming of Mother Bickerdyke at such a time could 
not but mean life and hope and salvation. Only the 
opening of the great Book of Life can reveal the ex- 
tent and helpfulness of her work. Her's was essen- 



34 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

tially a gospel of work, a religion of deeds rather than 
of words. Browning's lines seem just to fit her char- 
acter : 

''One who never turned her back, but marched breast forward; 
Never doubted clouds would break; 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would 

triumph ; 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. 
Sleep to wake. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE son's letter. 

''The world is all gates — all opportuuities. " — Lowell. 

Those who look for a detailed history of Mother 
Bickerdyke in these papers — one that would follow her 
step by step through her many activities, through her 
army life, her work in the "slums" in both eastern and 
western cities ere slumming had become the "fad" it 
now is, when only those thoroughly in earnest and 
with the desire to brighten the submerged lives deeply 
implanted in their hearts would enter upon such work 
— 'will, I fear, be much disappointed. Abler pens than 
mine have already written such histories ; I would only 
tell of her as I knew her, and give you such pictures of 
her life, such glimpses of the work she did as she gave 
me from time to time when I visited with her in her 
Russell home. In these visits she gave me vivid pic- 
tures indeed, but without the details and data necessary 
to the writing of history. There was a time when J 
expected to write her full story, so far as it could be 
told in words, taking it from her papers and letters 
and from her own lips, but one little circumstance and 
then another arose to prevent me and after a time, the 
thought seemed to grow distasteful to her. She said, 
"I have been before the public long enough — the in- 
terest in me cannot be what it once was, and any way, 
my boys know what I have done and will remember it 
and that's enough. All I ask now is to be let alone. 
Let me rest, for I am tired" — and the time and the op- 
portunity passed by. Yet I cannot think she would ob- 
ject to these memories of mine, written out of my rev- 
erent love for her and my sincere desire that the world 
should know as much as possible a worker who was 
like no other of whom we have record. An angel of 



36 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

mercy and an angel of wrath in one — a tender, true- 
hearted woman, lacking no womanly quality, no re- 
tinement, and yet strong and invincible of purpose as 
any man. A "Meg Merrilies" our editor called her, 
and yet she was a Dorothy Dix, too, with a heart that 
felt every throb of pain in another, and eyes as ready 
to weep in sympathy for sorrow as to flash fire over 
some crime committed. A hand that would wield the 
rod — if the rod was needed — and at the same time 
would "lead on gently" where gentleness would suf- 
fice — a strange unworldliness in some matters and yet 
with a deep knowledge of human nature, a great 
understanding of the wants and needs of humanity. 
One who Avon her way and accomplished her purpose 
everywhere loved, honored and reverenced by all who 
knew her — by those in high places, whose names are 
known "at the gates" of our national life, as by the 
poor pensioners on her bounty ; welcomed to the beau- 
tiful homes of the wealthy as eagerly as to the humble 
home of the laborer ; moving with easy grace in one 
as in the other and everywhere making her influence 
felt for good. Ah no ! too much cannot be written of 
her. She cannot be too well known among us. 

Perhaps here is as good a place as any to give you 
an extract from a private letter I recently received 
from her only surviving son, Hiram B. Bickerdyke, of 
Ericson, Montana, where he has an important position 
as mail contractor — a man so firm in his principles and 
convictions that, I have heard, he will employ no one 
who uses liquor or any intoxicating drink as a bev- 
erage — thus proving himself well worthy of his noble 
mother. It is with his full knowledge and consent that 
these papers are written. Under date of December 
3, 1905, he writes me*. 

''As to my recollections of home life with mother I will 
say that the fact is we never had but one season of about 
six months of home life after the war of '61 and '65. Mother's 
charity and self-sacrifice were wider and greater than the pub- 
lic generally believed or knows. However, she was the grand- 
est mother to her children, and no sacrifice was too great for 
them. What she did for them, as well as others, will never be 



THE SON'S LETTER. 37 

fully known, I was with mother during the winter of 1868, 
on a trip to Washington to secure governmental aid for the 
desolate settlers of Kansas, caused by the Indian raids of 
that year. I did not see her after that for six years, and then, 
in 1874, was with her from December of that year till March, 
1876, and I have never seen her since. As long as mother 
had strength and energy to move and do she never would settle 
down — which she did in the latter eighties with my brother 
at Russell, Kan. It is a fact that mother was at home with 
Brother James longer than at any other time since 1861. I 
traveled with her, as before stated, and did most of her cleri- 
cal work and saw much of her wonderful influence with the 
best people of that time, also her great executive ability, as 
there was no failure with anything she undertook. Everything 
must give way before her wonderful will. Tliat she was always 
right has been well proven, however strange it seemed at the 
time. Her great simplicity and common sense overcame all 
obstacles however great, and the greater they were the more 
Avilling was she to undertake to overcome them — not for her- 
self, but for others. It was by these traits she won the con- 
fidence of Grant, Sherman and Logan, and many others with 
w^hom she came in contact. 

''She never failed in anything 'but for herself. For her- 
self was never in existence — not in the smallest matter. I have 
never seen anything like it, and it is hard to make people 
understand that such did exist. Mother's work for others and 
her influence with the good people in making them give for 
others will never be known only by those who gave and assisted 
her in her work. The same influence was at work with all the 
famous and great military leaders during and after the war. 
I Tcnow this, for I was with her and saw and heard for my 
self. 'It is hard to get one to exceed his authority for the 
good of others,' they would say (those great generals and 
heads of departments), 'but we will do it, Mother Bickerdyke, 
for you never fail, and we know, from somewhere, you will 
make it all right' — and she did. I have often thought she 
was inspired, as she seemingly came up against some great 
W'all, forbidding farther progress, but like a flash all seemed 
to move out of the way. 

"As to mother 's home life in her last days in Kansas I pre- 
sume you are more fully acquainted wnth it than myself. I 
went down to Kansas upon receipt of the telegram telling of 
her illness, but did not arrive in time to attend the funeral. I 
live a long distance from railroads and telegraph stations and, 
for that reason, did not learn of her sickness in time to reach 
her before all was over — a fact that I deeply deplore. I am 
the only surviving son, as Brother James passed away last 
December, one year ago. 

' ' Strange as it may seem to others, we never, as a family, 
had mother with us after the war. Her energy and life went 
to aid others. As she would bluntly tell me, 'Others need it 



38 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

and you and we don't,' when I tried to prevail upon her 
to settle down, and largely for this reason I, like others, let 
her hold her way, for she was right." 

I deeply regret I had not talked more with Prof. 
James R. Bickerdyke concerning his home life with 
his mother, for he could have told me many little inci- 
dents that would have added much to the interest of 
my story, for he, more than any other, lived close to 
her in those last years, and knew of her inmost heart 
and purpose. 

I know she was anxious that only the truth should 
be told of her, for she said to me once, "Whatever you 
do, tell them just the truth," and I answered, "I shall 
do so if you tell it true to me, for I shall tell the tale as 
'tis told to me." In speaking of one who had written 
quite extensively of her some years before she said : 
*'It is a case of great I and little me" — meaning the 
writer had aggrandized herself in her writing without 
really telling much of what Mrs. Bickerdyke had done. 
She did not like that the recording of her work should 
be used as a stairway to fame for another. She dealt 
honestly with all and would have honest dealing from 
all for herself. Nor did she forget those in her service 
— ^but was kind and good to them as to all others. One 
in particular I remember, a mulatto girl, or woman, 
who was her housekeeper and general factotum for 
many years, giving generously of the love of her heart 
as well as of the work of her hands to the good mother 
who did much in many ways for her. This girl had 
a longing to study music and what did Mother Bick- 
erdyke do but send her down to Lindsborg, Kansas, 
a noted musical center, where she studied music to her 
heart's content. This woman's devotion to the family 
was so great that, even after Mother Bickerdyke was 
gone she remained to make a home for her son, where 
he might come for rest and recuperation whenever he 
had a little vacation from teaching and work among 
the schools. She would not press her claim for her 
wages when the son too was gone and the estate came 
to be settled, but let what was due her go *'to help the 
soldier boys" — as nearly all that came into that family 



THE SON'S LETTEE. 39 

went — and she, too, is worthy of mention among those 
who helped the good mother in her work of love. The 
world can never know how much of help and encour- 
agement is given those who work in public by just 
such lowly helpers as Lydia, who kept the home fires 
bright and warm and, in many ways, had her part in 
the good that was done. Nor did Lydia think less 
of her mistress that she spoke her mind freely when- 
ever the work did not go to suit her. She was ex- 
pected to speak her mind always and she did so "with- 
out let or hindrance." We all knew just where she 
stood, just what she would do and what she expected 
others to do, and life with all of its stern realities — 
perhaps because of its stern realities as well as of its 
joys — was beautiful and good to her and through her 
— through the love and the help she gave — to others 
also. The "primal duties" were ever before her — 
shining clear and steadfast — in life's sky, and she went 
from service to service, from love to love, steadfast, 
earnest and true. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WORK AMONG THE SICK AND POOR. 

David Starr Jordan tells us, "It is for us to express 
love in terms of human helpfulness" and none, it seems 
to me, ever did this more fully, more truly than did 
Mother Bickerdyke. She had a sure instinct for want 
and sufifering that led her unerringly wherever there 
was need of woman's love and ministry. Others might 
stand back in fear, might shrink from scenes of want, 
carnage and suffering, but not she. She only went 
forward with open, ready hands, and strong, true 
heart. We used to wonder how it was that she knew 
of the need that was so far from her. How did she 
hear of cases of sickness and of want of which those 
nearer to the scene than she knew little or nothing? 
Did she wear spectacles of the "Titbottom" kind that 
revealed the real needs of all around her whether near 
or far? Sometimes it did indeed seem so, for nothing 
seemed to escape her ; no case of need or of suffering 
seemed too far away for her to reach and reaching, 
help. In very truth she 

"Lived in a house by the side of the road," 

and was a true "friend to man" always. 

Away out on the prairies some twenty-five miles 
from her home in Russell, an old soldiei was slowly 
dying from cancer and there we found the good 
mother, caring for him, dressing the loathsome sore 
with her own hands, and, in every way possible to her, 
making smoother his pathway to rest. Back and forth 
on the long ride she went, nor failed in her work until 
the soldier was "mustered out" of earthly service. It 
was when returning from one of these trips she stopped 
at our home. Her eyes grew tender as she looked out 
over the peaceful river valley, set in its strong frame 
of hills. "It is so like the old Ball farm back in Ohio 



42 MOTHEE BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

where I grew up," she said, and then she added with a 
sigh, for she was weary, weary, "if I could only stay 
here for days and rest how glad I would be." We 
urged her to do so, but no, "I have so much to do — so 
many to look after, I cannot stop," she said, and she 
soon went her way again. 

Still farther from her home was another old sol- 
dier — one who had been a very brave scout during the 
war, but ere its close was stricken with a sickness that 
never left him though he lived until very recently. 
His disease was of such a nature that he lost nearly all 
control of his motions and, though a temperance man, 
he was often suspected of drunkenness, where he was 
not known, as he had every appearance of one under 
the influence of liquor. Towards the later part of his 
life he lost his mind and would often wander away 
from his miserable home and be gone for days at a 
time. His family, strangely enough, cared little what 
became of him, and gave little heed to his coming or 
going. Consequently they were objects of much 
"righteous indignation" on Mother Bickerdyke's part. 
A friend of mine who lived close by her in Russell, 
tells me that at one time some one of this poor man's 
family came to Mother Bickerdyke and told her he had 
wandered away and had not been seen for days. Full 
of wrath for such neglect she "staid not on the order 
of her going," but had the old black horse hitched to 
the buggy and accompanied by her son went at once 
in search of the old soldier. After a long, weary time 
they found him lying in some tall grass too sick and 
weak to move. They got him in the buggy and, sup- 
porting him in her strong arms, thev drove back to 
Russell, where by due process of law he was declared 
insane and sent to the asylum at Topeka. Mother 
Bickerdyke was appointed his guardian and used often 
to go down to see him. On one of her visits she dis- 
covered that he sat the most of the time in a hard- 
bottomed chair, and as soon as she got home she went 
to work and though her hands were so badly crippled 
it was only with great effort that she could sew, she 
made a patchwork cushion for him to sit on and sent 



WORK AMONG THE SICK AND POOR. 43 

it on to him. Some one from Russell who visited the 
asylum soon after the cushion was sent, was commis- 
sioned to see if "Comrade C " was sitting on it. 

The report came back that he was not — did not have 
it in fact. The friend who tells me of this incident 
says : "The letter she dictated and I wrote back to the 
superintendent of the asylum was enough to make 
him quake," but, not content with writing, she went 
immediately to Topeka herself (a distance of two hun- 
dred miles) and we who knew her could imagine the 
scene when she confronted the delinquent ofificial. All 
this that Comrade C — — might have a cushion to his 
chair, for needless to say, he had it after that as long 
as he lived. She counted nothing small or trivial that 
added to the comfort of her charges, and nothing 
within her power was too great, too difficult for her to 
do, so only that it was needed and helped in any way 
to make life easier or better for another. Her de- 
testation of the way "Comrade C 's" family treated 

him, their indifference to his condition — that was pit- 
iful in the extreme — or to his comfort, so aroused her 
wrath that she begrudged every cent they received 
from his pension — which were not many while she had 
charge of it. As his guardian she used all that was 
needed of his funds for his comfort. Yet, we may be 
sure, no penny of it was wasted. Her army record, 
the washing of hospital blankets and stores, of the 
shirts taken from the backs of wounded soldiers — all 
tell of her thrift, her ability to save and make a little 
go a long ways. The lessons of economy learned in 
the pioneer days in the log huts of her forefathers 
were "born in her b'.nes and bred in her flesh," she 
used to say, and she could not waste anything unless 
it was her own strength and life. Of these she gave 
without thought of withholding or of economy. 

These incidents of her care and watchful oversight 
for her "boys in blue" are but a few of many that could 
be cited, for she was always at work in some way for 
them, and generally had one or more of the sick, "the 
lame, the halt and the blind" with her. I remember 
one poor soldier who had been under her care in some 



44 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

hospital during the war, -^ame ail the way from San 
Francisco, and from a sister who lived there, and who 
would have cared for him, to Russell that he might 
spend the last weeks of his life with the "Soldiers' 
Mother/' whom he with many others loved so dearly. 
He knew the end of his earthly way was very near and 
could not bear not to see Mother Bickerdyke once 
more and feel her gentle ministries. She took him 
into her home and cared for him as if he had been 
her very own and her face was the last that he saw 
ere he looked upon the angel faces. Her hand held his 
in its strong, comforting clasp ; her voice sustained him 
as he "fell on sleep" to waken no more on earth. In her 
home the kindh^ people gathered for the last rites; 
from her home his body was borne by kind but 
stranger hands to its last resting place in earth's bosom, 
and on each recurring Decoration Day so long as she 
lived in Russell it was this dear old mother who placed 
on his grave the beautiful flowers sent from San Fran- 
cisco for that purpose. And who shall say that the 
joys of heaven and heavenly rest are not sweeter and 
dearer to this man (and to many another who, like 
him, knew how good it was to feel her care) for all 
she did for him? Surely there could have been no 
"dark way" for him to cross while her hands held his, 
and her love gave him firm faith in the higher Love 
watching over all. 

Like the "Drummer Boy of Kent" she could "never 
sound retreat" from duty or from service, and there 
seemed no room for thought of self in her mind. A 
friend who lived very near her in Russell told me of 
seeing her "drop exhausted in the street, with her bas- 
ket on her arm, a morning or two after she returned 
from the National Reunion at Washington." This 
trip, though a great joy to her, had exhausted her very 
much. It was some time in the nineties (the old sol- 
diers who may read this will probably remember the 
exact year though I do not) and she was growing 
old, yet knew it not, and was still unremitting and re- 
lentless in her demands on herself. She had had but 
little hope of going. Her son's work was such that 



WORK AMONG THE SICK AND POOR. 45 

he could not go with her, and he could not think of 
letting her go unattended on so long a trip.- Her 
lady friends had assured her that in case of a way 
opening for her to go, her wardrobe should be in 
readiness for instant packing, and when, '*at the elev- 
enth hour," word came from her soldier boys in the 
Solomon (Kansas) valley that a car had been char- 
tered and no attention would be lacking, and they 
"could not take 'no' for an answer," the dear old lady 
was almost overcome with her joy and the sense of care 
and security. Her wardrobe was ready, as promised, 
but when she brought out her "grip" it was crowded 
so full of papers, documents and credentials that she 
must present at ''Headquarters" to help her in the 
work she was planning to do, even at that advanced 
ige, that there was barely room left for a handful of 
chings for her comfort — so much did the needs of 
others outweigh her own needs -always. She made 
the trip and enjoyed it to the utmost. She accom- 
plished the work she hoped to do in Washington, and 
was so buoyed up with the joy and the success, with 
the glad meetings with so many of her "boys" that she 
did not realize how severely her strength and en- 
durance were taxed, and upon her return home 
at once took up the duties she had dropped for a few 
days. It was her habit to make the rounds among the 
sick and poor of the town each morning with a great 
basket of good things upon her arm that she doled out 
according to the need of each one of her pensioners: 
But for once even her strong will was not strong 
enough to conquer, or set aside the weariness of the 
flesh, and she fell in the street and, for a time, she who 
had cared so untiringly for others, must herself be 
cared for, and never was there lack of loving friends 
who, gladly and gratefully gave service to her. She 
rested fast, recuperated quickly, and soon was up and 
doing in the old wav. 



II 



CHAPTER V. 

WITH HER AT HOME. 

**I saw her upon nearer view, 

A spirit, yet a woman, too ! 

Her household motions light and free, 
******* 

A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet, 
A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food. 
A perfect woman nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort and command. ' ' 

How Wordsworth's beautiful tribute to woman 
comes back to me as out of the shadows of the years 
that are fled I recall Mother Bickerdyke as I saw her 
in her home. Not perfect in the sense of being im- 
mune from human faults and failures — we could not 
have loved her as we did — could not love her as we still 
do — had this been true, but yet most "nobly planned 
to warn, to comfort and command," with a something 
about her we could not resist — a something that called 
us to high belief and service. Was it the compelling 
power of her great love? the force of her deep, un- 
shaken faith in humanity? How vividly her face and 
form come back to me as I sit writing of her! She 
was as plain in dress as in speech ; "They try to fix me 
up and make me look stylish sometimes," she told me, 
"but," she added, "I don't like it. I don't want to think 
of my dress, there's too much else to think of and to 
do. I've no time for the making or the wearing of 
frills. It's what a woman does, not what she wears, 
that counts with me. I've no mind to be fashionable, 
anyway," and I hear yet the laugh with which she 
finished her remarks. And so it is that when I look 
at her photo, taken when some one had "fixed her up," 
another and a dearer picture of her comes to my mind. 
A picture in which her soft, white hair is drawn 



48 MOTHEE BICKEKDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

smoothly back from her face and coiled low down on 
the back of her head, her dress, guiltless of collar or 
tie, unfastened at the throat and turned back to give 
her ample breathing room, her waist untrammeled by 
girdle or belt, her skirt short enough to be out of the 
way of her feet — never needing to be held up or 
thought of when she walked — in fact, the dress of a 
free woman who placed comfort before style, and to 
whom life was too busy and earnest, too filled with 
real things to have time or care for what she wore. 
Neat and tidy she always was, but unconventional and 
free. I called at her home informally at all hours — 
morning, noon or night — and this was the garb in 
which she oftenest greeted me. This was as I saw and 
knew her in the summer days. As winter came on she 
dressed warmer, as we all do, but always in a way to 
leave her the free use of every member. In more for- 
mal dress she wore soft folds of white lace about her 
neck, but no stifl collars, no fetters of any kind for 
her. 

As I have said, there was no formality about my 
visits. Wherever in the house she happened to be 
busy at the time I called, whether in kitchen, bedroom 
or parlor, there she took me, there we talked and 
worked together for, unless my stay must be very 
short, she would let me take part in her work, and 
thus I felt that I did not hinder her in any way and 
staid longer than I would have done had it been other- 
wise. Once it was the time of canning peaches ; she 
led me out into the kitchen where I found the dignified 
Professor Bickerdyke with one of his mother's ample 
aprons fastened about his waist helping Lydia pare 
peaches, while she attended to the cooking and the 
canning of them. '7^1'"^^''}' had nothing to do this aft- 
ernoon and these peaches needed taking care of right 
away, so I told him he might as well help us," she 
said. At my request, she gave me a pan of peaches 
and a knife and I, too, ''helped," and what a social, 
merry time we had over our work! She kept urging 
me to "eat them — eat all you can — they're good for 
you." "Yes, eat them," said the Professor, "for what 



WITH HER AT HOME. 49 

you eat mother won't have to can. She is getting too 
tired anyway" — so mindful was he ever of her com- 
fort. 

Agam I would find her busy overseeing the making 
of garments for some of her "poor folks," whom she 
had literally ''always with her," or dictating letters to 
the girl who wrote for her, for owing to the effect of 
the blood poisoning she contracted while at work 
among the prisoners of Andersonville, her hands, all 
the later years of her life, were too stiff to guide a pen. 
Yet her letters, though written by another, came warm 
and true from her heart, and woe be to the girl who 
sought to change them in any way, or to make them 
different from her dictation ! She would not stand any 
"meddling," as she called it, and "What I want written 
I want written," she would say. "You can write your 
own letters to suit yourself, but mine must be written 
to suit me, and if you can't do it some one else can." 
Yet, despite this strict "toeing of the mark" required 
of all who worked for her, those who were longest in 
her service loved her the best, for they found her as 
ready to praise as to blame, as quick to see a good 
intent as a fault. She never forgot the ties of our 
common humanity that bound her to the lowest and 
the weakest as surely as to the highest and the great- 
est. It is said "More love is needed to blame rightly 
than to praise." This love Mother Bickerdyke had in 
full measure "pressed down and overflowing." And 
not for the human family alone, but for the "little 
brothers in feathers and fur," for all the domestic ani- 
mals as well. She thought of and planned for the 
comfort of all that came within her reach, and that 
reach extended far and wide. 

I recall one amusing little incident connected with 
a moving day. The drayman had his load all ready 
for a start with Mother Bickerdyke comfortably seated 
in the front of the wagon. As he attempted to climb 
up to his seat on top of his load, his feet struck a large 
basket that he had not before seen. "What's that?" 
he asked, as he tried to make room for his feet beside 



50 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

it. 'That, sir, is my cat. If you don't want to ride 
with her, you can walk, for she isn't going to," came 
the quick reply from the good mother. Needless to 
say both man and cat rode in comfort from the old to 
the new home. 

If a sick person was refractory and inclined to re- 
fuse necessary ministrations, it was Mother Bicker- 
dyke who was appealed to to find a way to solve the 
problem. And solve it she did in ways alike vigorous 

and unique, as when Mrs. , an English lady of 

much refinement — was sick with fever. In her de- 
lirium she refused the bath ordered for her by the at- 
tending physician. The nurses tried by all gentle 
ways to override her sick fancies and carry out the 
doctor's orders, but in vain. At last they sent for 
Mrs. Bickerdyke. She came, she saw, she conquered. 
Stepping to the bedside with that resolute way so well 
known where she was known, she turned back the 
covers with a ''Ha ! ha ! What's this ? Won't have a 
bath, eh? Now you turn right over here and be 
bathed or / zvill spank you.'' Even in her delirium the 
sick woman recognized the voice of authority and the 
invincible will with which she had to deal and obedi- 
ently as a child she "turned over" and was bathed 
without protest or resistance. ''Now, why couldn't 
she have done that for us?" questioned the nurses. It 
was but the difference in the women that all, whether 
sick or well, must feel. Mother Bickerdyke not only 
"spoke as one having authority," but also as one whose 
commands could not be disobeyed. She had faith in 
herself and in her cause — and this inspired others with 
a like faith. She did not expect to fail, therefore she 
did not fail. It was the sublime might of right — the 
power of truth invincible and unyielding ever, that, 
showing now and then in such lives as hers, gives us 
hope for the future and a promise of things to be when 
men and women generally claim their heritage as 
children of the Highest, and awake to the possibili- 
ties hid in our human nature. As her son has written 
"she was inspired" — but so may others be inspired if 
they will but live in harmonv with the Divine and 



WITH HER AT HOME. 51 

draw their daily, hourly supply from the great founts 
of life and knowledge. She came of heroic stock. In 
her veins mingled the blood of statesmen, warriors 
and patriots, as well as of the scholar and the preacher, 
of men and women bred in the stern schools of want 
and necessity, of high faiths and of noble living. Who 
but one thus born could have done the work she did? 
Who but such as she could have brought order and 
comfort out of the disorder and confusion of camp 
and field hospitals, sustaining the courage of the 
wounded and the dying with songs and prayers, with 
"words fitly spoken," and deeds as fitly done, while 
shot and shell fell and exploded around her? To 
whom but to such as she would the soldier give the holy 
name of ''Mother" — that name that is first on the lips 
of childhood entering life, and last on the lips of the 
dying as they slip out into the silence of eternity? 
Who but Mother Bickerdyke could have shaken and 
scolded our dear Senior Editor out of the apathy of 
fever and home-sickness as he lay "one of the helpless 
burdens of the hospital at Corinth," when he, "a mere 
baby of seventeen," as he told me, was slipping out of 
life from the mere lack of something to arouse and 
hold him? This something she furnished and to her, 
under God, undoubtedly we owe his life of love and 
service, of devotion to truth in the long years that lie 
between seventeen and sixty. And he is but one among 
hundreds, yea, thousands who have felt the healing 
touch of her hands and been aroused Xu life and love 
of life — to the gladness of service and duty by the 
beauty and depth of her gracious ministry. 



CHAPTER VI. 

STORIES OF ARMY LIFE. 

* ' To thy duty now and ever ! 

Dream no more of rest or stay; 
Give to Freedom's great endeavor 

All thou art or hast today." 

Such must have been the call that came to Mother 
Bickerdyke in those early days of war when first the 
heart-breaking stories of suffering, sickness and pri- 
vation came back from the front where the brave boys 
in blue were offering their all at Freedom's shrine. 
She loved her home and her children as tenderly as 
mothers ever loved them. She had felt a double duty 
laid upon her for the care and guidance of her chil- 
dren since the death of her husband left her their only 
protector. She loved the quiet home and home life. 
It's "sweet, safe corners" were dear to her, as they 
are to all women, and she had planned her work there. 
But the winds of the South brought voices to her 
stronger even than the voices of her children, the 
hands of the sick and wounded, stretched out in mute 
appeal, drew her with irresistible force, and for them, 
that she might answer to their need, might bind up 
their wounds and give aid and comfort where it was so 
sorely needed, she put aside the clinging hands of her 
little ones and went resolutely forth to the larger 
duty — -the greater need. But let no one think this 
was easy for her or belittle the sacrifice she made. 
Though she did not think of self, she did think of 
her children and what this breaking up of the home 
and mother's absence would mean to them. Their 
pleading cries rang in her ears, their hands clung to 
Irer as only childish hands can cling, but with a 
strength and heroism as grand as ever shown on the 



54 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

battlefield she put them aside and turned southward. 
Once, when we were speaking of this, she said: "It 
was hard, very hard, to leave my home and children, 
but the way opened for me, the work seemed to come 
to me to be done, and God gave me strength to do it." 
Was it any wonder that, working in this spirit, she 
was indomitable? That she never met defeat and 
knew not failure? It was such sentences as these that 
gave me insight into her character and taught me un- 
erringly of the great mother-heart that animated her. 
One of my friends once said to me of her: "She 
opens her heart to you as she seldom does to anyone," 
and she herself said the same. "It's so easy to tell you 
things," she said. Why, I do not know, I only know 
I came from her presence always with a feeling that 
I had walked on holy ground and had received a new 
baptism for life's duties and joys." 

A nation's growth is measured by the heart-throbs 
of its people, by their heroic deeds, their achievements 
and aspirations, but still more truly by the lives of 
the common people, those whom Lincoln said "God 
must have loved or he would not have made so many 
of them" — and their 

"Plain truth to manhood 

And to God's supreme design." 

Knowing this, I love to think what an uplift to home 
and national life was given by Mother Bickerdyke's 
life and by each one who lives and serves as she did. 
One life, though it be ever so true and beautiful, seems 
but as a tiny drop in the great ocean of life, and yet 
it has its mighty influence for all time — for eternity. 

Mother Bickerdyke took responsibilities upon her- 
self as freely as those of a different make would have 
shunned them. She never seemed happier than when 
work was piled about her "mountain high." This 
was a challeno^e to her to do her best, and she accepted 
it with cheerful courage and great good will, nor gave 
herself rest or pause until she had accomplished her 
purpose. Her mind moved quickly and its grasp 
seemed alm.ost marvelous at times. It was as if she 



STOEIES OF AEMY LIFE. 55 

saw the end from the beginning and felt the thing 
that should be ever beating beneath the thing, that was. 
Her comprehension of a situation was instant. She 
saw at once what was lacking and the way to supply 
it. She aimed high; realizing 

'^Not failure, but low aim is crime" — 

and went straight and true to her mark. She did not 
overestimate her ability, but knew herself even as she 
knew others, and was as relentless and exacting of 
self as of others always. Her sympathy and help en- 
listed in any movement was at once a pledge and a 
promise of success. Her strong word went out over 
the deep waters of life and did not return unto her 
void. Her sublime faith in the right and the con- 
quering might of right lay back of every act and lent 
to its success. Self was lost in the work before her, 
or how could she have done what she did ? How else 
could she have gone into the pestilential hospitals at 
Fort Pickering, where the dread scourge of smallpox 
raged unchecked and the conditions had become so 
bad that no other help could be obtained ? She did not 
hesitate for one moment, though, as Mrs. Livermore 
tells us, the place had become ''fouler and more 
noisome than an Augean stable. But Mother Bicker- 
dyke was just the Hercules to cleanse it. She raised 
such a storm about the ears of the officials whose 
neglect had caused its terrible condition as took the 
heads off of some of them." Though her time and her 
strength had seemed fully occupied before, she added 
this one more thing and went to the loathsome place 
with the same cheerfulness, the same undaunted cour- 
age that sustained her elsewhere. Surely the good 
angels must have shielded her — knowing our need of 
her and the great work still awaiting her doing. 

Her reminiscent talk of her army life and work was 
always very entertaining. Though the boys in blue 
were her first care, she cared also for the boys in gray 
when they came in her way. The leaders in the re- 
bellion — the "hot-heads" on either side who were 
quick to make occasion for war — she denounced, but 



56 MOTHEE BICKERDYKE AS 1 KNEW HER. 

never the private soldiers. Of the "rank and file" in 
the southern army she said, ''They fought from duty 
and a love of home; for what seemed to them true 
patriotism, just as our boys did, and they needed the 
same care vi^hen they were sick and wounded, I could 
not pass them by unheeded." So the great mother- 
heart went out to them and her hands were ready in 
service to them also. She told interesting stories of 
the southern women who sometimes came into camp 
in quest of a relative or friend. One such, born and 
bred in luxury, with all her environment so different 
from that of a nothern woman that she could not im- 
agine a lady would work as she saw Mother Bicker- 
dyke working, was very haughty and could scarce bear 
to speak to the plain ''Yankee woman," who, in telling 
me the story, said: "I was getting dinner for some of 
my sick boys. I knew this woman was hungry — as so 
many of the brave southern women were in those days 
— and I fixed some food on a tray and offered it to 
her. She drew herself up haughtily, disdaining to 
touch food prepared by a 'Yankee.' 'Very well, 
madame,' I said, 'but there it is ; you can eat it or let 
it alone as you please. And, putting the tray down, I 
went on with my work. She had come to see her son, 
who, badly wounded, had been picked up and brought 
in with a lot of other poor fellows. Later, when she 
found I had cared for him just as I did for the others, 
her pride and haughtiness gave way and she was the 
mother only. With tears running down her cheeks 
she came back to me, begging me to forgive her — poor 
soul ! I'd nothing to forgive. I knew all about it. She 
thanked me over and over again, asked me if she might 
kiss me, and said, 'T did not know northern women 
were like you.' A little later she asked me for the 
food she had at first refused. 'I do want it,' she said, 
'for I am hungry — hungry.' She came often to camp 
after that and we became good friends. I was almost 
as glad as she was when her boy was nicely conva- 
lescent and she could take him home with her. There 
were, of course, some subjects, of which we did not 



, STOEIES OF AKMY LIFE. 57 

speak. Why should we speak of ihem? She was a 
southern woman and I a 'Yankee.' We could not see 
nor think alike. It is better to 'agree to disagree' in 
such cases I think." 

This woman is but one of many southern women 
who had reason to thank the good old mother for her 
care of sons, husbands, fathers or brothers who were 
dear to them. It was the sufferer she served — not the 
northern or the southern man. If, after the pain had 
passed, she "spoke her mind" and tried to make those 
who listened to her feel the im.perative need that there 
should be but one flag and one country, that North 
and South, though so different in their needs and re- 
sources, should be as true brothers — living in a spirit 
of loving kindness one with the other, that the blessed 
boon of liberty was for all alike — a gift of Nature and 
of Nature's God, that none might take away — if she 
taught them — the northern boy alike with the southern 
boy — that their heredity from God was great enough, 
and strong enough to overcome and make right what- 
ever was wrong in their earthly inheritance, it was only 
because she was true to the best that was in her anc 
would help all with whom her lines were cast to "gird 
on the full armor of manhood" and battle for the right 
— for the truth that is greater than country, transcend- 
ing race or creed. Her's was akin to the Puritan con- 
science that must "bear witness for truth" at all times 
and in all places alike, yet so timely were her words, 
so pure her motive that she did not often give offense 
and neither did she speak in vain. I say her's was 
akin to the Puritan conscience, indeed it was 
a part of her inheritance. Her great-great-grand- 
father, on her mother's side, came over in the "May- 
flower," while, on her father's side, was "the beautiful 
Mary Ball," mother of George Washington in direct 
line of descent. Many of her ancestors did valiant 
duty in the struggle for independence, and had their 
full share in the hardships and vicissitudes of the new 
country. Knowing this, remembering the sturdy 
strength and independence of the men and women of 
those days, helps us to understand Mrs. Bickerdyke's 



58 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

character and to know why she could not "beat re- 
treat." It was these quahties of heart and brain, de- 
scending through the long line of noble men and fair 
women, that helped to keep her 

— * ' forever up 
To the heroic level of the old time," 

and the grander heights of the new day, in which she 
had so great a part. 



CHAPTER VII. 

STORIES OF SERVICE. 

' ' The day 's sharp strife is ended now, 
Our work is done, God knoweth how. ' ' 

''I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?" 
We can hardly imagine a time when the soldiers 
and their friends — and who is not the friend of the 
gallant *'boys in bine?" — will lose interest in the 
telling of the stories connected with Mother Bicker- 
dyke's army work. If it be true that "all the world 
loves a lover," it is no less true that *'all the world 
loves" and admires a woman who with a heroic de- 
votion to duty combines the tenderness and love of a 
mother and is the embodiment of faithful, affectionate 
service where service is most needed. 

In speaking of Mrs. Bickerdyke's work in the 
sm^allpox hospital, two miles down the river from 
Memphis, Mrs. Livermore says of her: ''She was 
ready to arouse a moral earthquake, or let loose a 
small tornado of wrath whenever she discovered any 
cruelty or unkindness to the men, or any disorder or 
neglect, or uncleanness in the hospital or about the 
premises." Mrs. Hoge, in writing of her in *'Boys in 
Blue," recognizes the same heroic qualities. She 
speaks of the "hospitals rank with disease and death, 
foul with festering and unwashed wounds and un- 
clean garments," places where "inexperienced sur- 
geons stood aghast and felt almost powerless to 
cleanse and purify." She compares these hospitals 
to the great prairies of the West, where "ordinary 
methods and machinery would fail, and the suc- 
cessful farmer falls back on the great prairie plow, 
drawn by half a score of oxen." She speaks of the 
times when only the thunderbolts can scatter the pes- 



60 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

tilence and says "the prairie plow and the thunder- 
bolt were needed in these hospitals as on the prairie, 
and they came in the person of Mother Bickerdyke. 
A pythoness if her precious boys were assailed, 
she was gentle and tender as a loving mother to 
every sick or wounded soldier. Woe to the man, no 
matter what his rank, who trampled on the rights of 
her 'boys in blue.' Faithful surgeons praised her 
and rehed upon her skill, strength and tenderness. 
Those who were the reverse cursed her and clamored 
for her removal." Mrs. Hoge also tells of an Ohio 
colonel who boasted that Mother Bickerdyke 
''saved his life after a severe amputation and 
treated him as well as a private even after 
she was told he was an officer." ''And a major 
general told me with glistening eyes she had saved 
his life at Corinth. He had a terrific congestive 
chill, was laboring for breath, unrelieved by medi- 
cine, when he sent for her (Mother Bickerdyke) as 
a last resort, knowing her unwillingness to leave the 
privates — the men who so much needed her service. 
'General,' she said, 'you must have a bath.' .'A bath,' 
he gasped, 'that's impossible ; there's no water within 
four miles.' 'Never you mind,' she said, 'I'll get it.' 
That was enough for the general, and he waited. In 
fifteen minutes she appeared with two soldiers carry- 
ing a huge tub of steaming water. 'Now, boys,' she 
said, 'strip the General, put him in the tub, cover him 
close with a blanket, and I will give him a drink.' 
Her orders were promptly obeyed. She gave him a 
glass of hot toddy, then had him rubbed with dry, 
warm cloths till circulation was restored, placed him 
in bed, surrounded with hot bricks, and 'Richard was 
himself again.' " In telling of this incident Mrs. 
Bickerdyke would add, with a laugh, "And he didn't 
know that I afterwards bathed sixteen tired, dirty, 
half-sick boys in the same water, adding a little fresh 
hot water each time, as all the water for the hos- 
pitals was hauled four miles. Though this was not 
hygienic, nor according to Mrs. Bickerdyke's ideas 



STOEIES OF SERVICE. 61 

of the fitness of things, it was the best she could do 
under the circumstances — proof of how she would 
always "find a way or make one"' — and surely better 
than no bath in the dire need. Mrs. Hoge says: 
"She seemed to be an individual mother to each man. 
We may think how deeply her heart was wrung with 
pity and sorrow and how, because of it, she would 
throw herself into the work of caring for those re- 
maining with redoubled energy and freshly conse- 
crated spirit and love." It is as an "individual 
mother" each soldier who was under her care thinks 
of her now. It is as such that he pictures her to 
his children, and he never wonders that they ask 
him, "Is she our grandma, too?" 

Mrs. Livermore says her only purpose during those 
trying seasons was beautifully expressed in her own 
simple words : "I kept doing something all the time 
to make the men better and to help them get well." 
All who knew her recognized that hers was a sym- 
pathy and a love that must be expressed in action. 
To do "something to help" was not only a necessity 
to her, but it was her only relief when in the midst 
of such terrible suffering and carnage as she was 
obliged to witness. It was this ability to throw her- 
self, her sympathies and her heart — her all — into her' 
work and find relief thereby that sustained her and 
gave her strength and courage to stand to her post 
when others no less willing or tender but less fortu- 
nately, less fittingly, endov/ed, faltered and fell. 

Mrs. Livermore in her "My Story of the War" 
tells us how "a mother kneeling by the cot of her son, 
who was scarcely seventeen years old, said : 'It is no 
wonder that you are called mother here, for you 
treat all these men with such kindness and patience. 
I owe to you the preservation of my darling's life. 
Oh, it would have broken my heart had I found him 
dead.' With that thought she burst into a passion of 
tears and buried her face in his pillow. He soothed 
her silver hair with one hand (he had lost the other) 
and tried to comfort her. Such scenes aroused feel- 



62 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

ings in the heart of Mother Bickerdyke for which 
she could find no expression save in work." 

Continuing her story of this noble woman, Mrs. 
Livermore says: "One of her best known acts is 
an interference that earned for her the title of 'Gen- 
eral.' It was at the time when the Confederates at- 
tempted to recapture Corinth and attacked the de- 
fenses on October 3, 1862. The hospital work was 
so well arranged, or organized, that it could be done 
very quickly, and Mrs. Bickerdyke found time to 
study the progress of the battle. Towards evening 
she saw a brigade hurrying forward and learned that 
they had marched since noon and were about to join 
in the struggle. The officer in command was re- 
quested to let them rest a few minutes, but refused. 
The men were passing the hospital when a strong 
voice cried 'Halt!' Instinctively they obeyed, and 
attendants began to distribute soup and cofifee. Mean- 
while their canteens were filled and each man re- 
ceived a loaf of bread. 'Forward ! March !' came the 
order in a very few minutes, the time lost being more 
than compensated by the renewed courage of the 
men, who had no other chance to rest until midnight. 
Mrs. Bickerdyke had given the order to 'halt' her- 
self when she found no one else would do it, and her 
'interference' was deeply appreciated, for in spite 
of all eflforts many died from hunger and cold during 
that battle. 

"Though Mrs. Bickerdyke was always neat and 
cleanly in her dress, she was indifferent to its attrac- 
tions, and amid the flying sparks from open fires her 
calico dress would often take fire and was often full 
of little holes. Someone asked her if she were not 
afraid of being burnt. 'Oh,' she replied, 'my boys put 
me out!' 'They are all the time putting me out,' she 
said afterwards, 'and a dozen of 'em were grabbing 
me whenever I was cooking by the log fire, for the 
fire would snap and my clothes would catch, but I 
couldn't tell where.' " 

Mrs. Livermore tells us of an officer who said of 



STOKIES OF SERVICE. 63 

Mother Bickerdyke: 'That homely figure, clad in 
calico, drapped in a shawl and surmounted by the 
'shaker bonnet,' is more to this army than the Ma- 
donna to a Catholic." We who have witnessed the 
homage paid her by the soldiers of the West can 
easily believe this. And not the soldier alone, but 
all with whom she came in contact felt the innate 
motherliness, the goodness and reliability of her char- 
acter. So we do not wonder that Mrs. Livermore's 
Norwegian maid, Martha (during the war, when the 
Livermore home in Chicago was the headquarters for 
the nurses sent out by the Sanitary Commission), an- 
nounced the coming of Mrs. Bickerdyke thus to her 
mistress, just returned from some errand downtown : 
''Another one of them nurse women have come with 
some carpet-bag," said Martha. "This one," she 
added, "have no afraid to do anything, and have make 
herself to take a bath, and have put herself to bed 
till supper time. She say she have very many hun- 
dred miles rode, and very many all shot-up soldiers 
to take care of, and she be got awful tired, and, poor 
woman, she look seek (sick). But she make me to 
think of my poor mother, what make herself to die 
in Norway with so much work too hard, before to 
this country I came. I like this nurse woman what 
have come more than the rest that stayed away." So 
surely did the great heart make itself felt by all. Of 
the stories Mrs. Livermore tells of Mother Bicker- 
dyke none are more characteristic than the one of 
how she induced General Sherman to change an order 
he had issued "absolutely forbidding agents of sani- 
tary supplies or agents of any description, to go over 
the road from Nashville to Chattanooga. He alleged 
as the reason for this prohibition that he wished the 
entire ability of the railroad devoted to strictly active 
military operations. Mrs. Bickerdyke (just return- 
ning from a trip to the North, where, to use her own 
expression, she had stirred up the people and the 
aid societies to give "as with a big spoon") found 
Nashville full of worried agents and of sanitary stores 



64 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

that were needed down the road and spoiling for lack 
of transportation. Her pass from General Grant 
would take her to Chattanooga despite General Sher- 
man's prohibition. Before starting her fertility of in- 
vention manifested itself in a characteristic act. Am- 
bulances with m.ules in harness were being sent to 
various points against the day of need. No barrels 
were allowed in these ambulances, but all the bags 
that could he crowded in. Getting such help as she 
could muster they made bags that were filled with 
such articles as could be sent in them as well as in 
barrels, and the ambulances went away packed with 
articles for the hospitals. Forty such left for Hunts- 
ville, Ala., thirty for Bridgeport, and several for other 
points. Then Mother Bickerdyke, despite remon- 
strance and opposition, took the next train for Chat- 
tanooga and made her unexpected debut at General 
Sherman's headquarters. 

"Halloo ! Why, how did you get down here ?" 
asked one of the General's staff officers as he saw her 
enter Sherman's headquarters. 

"Came down in the cars, of course. There's no 
other way of getting down here that I know of," re- 
plied the matter-of-fact woman. 'T want to see Gen- 
eral Sherm.an." 

"He's in there writing," said the officer, pointing 
to an inner room, "but I guess he won't see you." 

"I guess he will!" and she pushed into the apart- 
ment. 

"Good morning. General ! I want to speak to you 
a moment. May I come in?" 

"I should think you had got in!" answered the 
General, barely looking up, in great annoyance. 
"What's up now?" 

"Why, General," said the earnest matron, in a per- 
fect torrent of words, "we can't stand this last order 
of yours, nohow. You'll have to change it, as sure 
as you live. We can get along without any more 
nurses and agents, but the supplies we must have. 
The sick and wounded men need them, and you'll 



J 



STOEIES OF SEEVICE. 65 

have to give permission to bring them down. The 
fact is, General, after a man is unable to carry a gun 
and drops out of line, you don't trouble yourself about 
him, but turn him over to the hospitals, expecting the 
doctors and nurses to get him wq\\ and put him back 
into the service as soon as possible. But how are we 
going to make bricks without straw? Tell me that, 
if you can." 

"Well, I'm busy today, and cannot attend to you. 
I'll see you some other time." 

But though Sherman kept on writing. Mother 
Bickerdyke saw a smile lurking in the corner of his 
mouth and knew she would carry her point, so she 
persisted. "No, General, don't send me away until 
you've fixed this thing as it ought to be fixed. You 
had me assigned to your corps and told me that you 
expected me to look after the nursing of the men who 
needed it. But I should like to know how I can do 
this if I don't have anything to work with? Have 
some sense about it now. General." 

There was a hearty laugh at this and a little badinage 
ensued, which Mrs. Bickerdyke ended in her brusque 
way with, "Well, I can't stand fooling here all day. 
Now, General, write an order for two cars a day to 
be sent down from the Sanitary Commission at Nash- 
ville and I'll be satisfied." 

The order was v^^ritten, and for weeks all the sani- 
tary stores from Nashville to Chattanooga and the 
posts along the road were sent directly or indirectly 
through this mediation of Mother Bickerdyke. Think 
what this meant to the army there, of the lives' saved, 
the dear ones restored to their homes and families be- 
cause of it, and thank God that Mother Bickerdyke 
had the courage to stand firm and demand that the 
right be done when such action was necessary. Is it 
to be wondered at that, to quote again from Mrs. 
Livermore, "In old New England homesteads, in the 
sunny valleys of California, or on the Western prairies, 
wherever the soldiers have made their homes, the 
name of Mother Bickerdyke will be spoken with rev- 



66 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

erential love until her 'boys' are mustered out and 
their tongues are silent in death ?" In no place will 
this be more true than here in Kansas, where so many 
homes are due to her untiring care and watchful love. 
Some years after the close of the war Miss Mary 
A. Holland, herself an army nurse and at times a co- 
worker with Mrs. Bickerdyke, published a book called 
"Our Army Nurses," in which she gave the names and 
a more or less extended account of the work of a great 
many of that noble army of women who followed the 
soldiers from camp to camp, from battlefield to battle- 
field, doing everywhere all that could be done to alle- 
viate the horrors of war. Speaking of these nurses 
in a private letter to Mrs. Bickerdyke, that it was my 
privilege to read. Miss Holland said : ''We all did all 
we could, but you exceeded us all. Not one of us 
could come up to your bonnet strings." She devotes 
a number of pages of her book to Mrs. Bickerdyke 
and the work she did, and with the rest gives this 
description of the battle at Missionary Ridge in Mother 
Bickerdyke's own words : "The night before the battle 
was bright moonlight and all night long the troops 
marched to their position. In the morning they pre- 
sented a solid wall of blue. Never were men more 
hopeful, and yet it looked so terrible, so appalling, that 
dangerous route up the rough and jaggfed mountain- 
side. I was in the second story of the hotel. My duty 
was to receive the gifts from the soldiers to their 
friends if, to use their own expression, they 'bit the 
dust.' These gifts consisted of farewell letters, 
watches, money, and any little things they wanted to 
send 'home' if they never returned. The order to 
march was given between eleven and twelve o'clock. 
Amid the roar and din of shot and shell and the com- 
mands of the officers, it was almost impossible to dis- 
tinguish any particular sound. Yet General Oster- 
haus' thrilling commands could be heard with startling 
distinctness. It was his artillery that sent the first 
shell through General Bragg's headquarters. The 
men marched up that stony precipice so rapidly that 



STOEIES OF SEKVICE. 67 

even the officers were amazed. General Grant asked, 
''Who gave that command ?" General Thomas replied, 
''They gave it themselves." In one short hour that 
desperate battle was fought and won. General Bragg 
was in full retreat and his army closely pursued. Was 
not the God of Battles there? The Stars and Stripes 
floated from one end of Missionary Ridge to the other. 
Seventeen hundred men were killed and wounded in 
the Fifteenth Army Corps alone." 

As this was the corps that she regarded as belonging 
to her more than any other, each boy being her boy 
in a deep and tender sense, it is easy to conceive that 
her great heart was deeply wrung with anguish and 
pity. 

Miss Holland tells us that at Fort Donelson, 
"many of the wounded of the Southern army, who 
had been deserted, were the recipients of her (Mother 
Bickerdyke's) care. As a mangled arm was being 
dressed for one of these men he felt instinctively the 
deep sympathy for his suffering, and said, 'That arm 
would not have done such service if I had known what 
sort of people I was fighting.' This must have been 
the thought of many a gray-clad hero who felt her 
tender ministry." 

Continuing her story, Miss Holland says : "One 
night Mother Bickerdyke was making her usual round 
of the ward. The lights were turned down and many 
of the soldiers were sleeping, while here and there a 
restless sufferer counted the lagging seconds and 
longed for morning. Passing along she ministered to 
each one as the occasion demanded, until one asked, 
'Are you not tired. Mother Bickerdyke?' Not for a 
moment did she think of claiming sympathy, but re- 
plied in her usual brisk way, 'What if I am? That is 
nothing. I am well and strong, and all I want is to 
see you so, too.' In a few moments more she was at 
her place by the table to assist the surgeon in an am- 
putation, then received the patient into her own care. 
As she gave him a restorative he whispered, 'Take a 
message from me to my poor family. I shall surely 



68 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

die.' How her heart ached for him in his weakness 
and suffering! But there was no change in her cairn, 
cheerful manner; no trembhng of her hopeful voice, 
as she replied, 'Now, do not talk. You are going to 
take all your messages to them yourself, for I 
know you have a splendid chance to get well.' " 

How many thus upborne by her brave heart, sus- 
tained by her courage when they were too weak and 
sick to have courage for themselves, rallied and went 
back to health and duty we shall never know, at least 
not in earth-life. For her — as one day for us — the 
records must be opened now and she must be learning 
ever more and more of the grand work she did, and 
how glad, how grateful she must be that all this was 
permitted unto her! 

Recently a friend wrote to tell me of how the life 
of a dear soldier brother was saved through Mother 
Bickerdyke's care. She says : "I met her at Bunker 
Hill, at the celebration of her eightieth birthday, and 
tried to express our deep gratitude to her, but she 
stopped me with a ''Hush, I only did my duty." Ah, 
but she gave a grand interpretation to that word duty 
and would have no undue praise for herself or for her 
work. The Persians have this proverb : "He wants 
no other rosary whose thread of life is strung with 
beads of love and thought." Had Mother Bickerdyke 
been the most devout Catholic this had been her all 
sufficient "rosary." 

I have read the story of many army nurses and feel 
a great pride and gladness in the work they did, but 
so far as I can learn, Mother Bickerdyke was the only 
one of them all who was never "mustered out" until 
Death gave her her discharge. Though she was no 
longer needed in camp and field, she never gave up 
her service for the soldiers, but continued in active 
work and in tender sympathy for them to the very 
end of her earthly way. Thousands of soldiers' or- 
phans were placed by her in good homes ; thousands 
of widows provided for, while no one knows the num- 
ber of soldiers who received pensions and just recog- 



STOKIES OF SERVICE. 69 

nition of service rendered through her unwearied ef- 
forts and resistless courage. Though the war with 
its horrible carnage ended, there was no surcease of 
labor for her. With her wonderful insight she saw 
the needs of the discharged soldiers ; saw what the 
change from the strict discipline of army life to the 
freedom of the civilian must mean to them, and seeing 
this, she saw, too, how best to help in each case. She 
was a self-appointed — or was it a God-appointed — 
Moses to lead the great army of discharged men to 
new lands of promise and inspire them with hopes of 
homes and plenty there. The vision granted her she 
made real to others. It is no wonder the "old boys" 
bless her; no wonder they love her. I have her state- 
ment that in the years from 1861 to 1865 over two 
millions of dollars' worth of sanitary supplies passed 
through her hands and, she said, "thousands and thou- 
sands of our brave soldiers were strengthened and 
saved by these supplies. We should have lost half our 
soldiers had it not been for the supplies sent by the 
Sanitary and Christian Commissions." But of the 
amount of money, of time and energy she spent in the 
years that intervened between the close of the war and 
her call to the Higher Life there is no computing. 
She said to a young friend of ours when she was in 
great sorrow : 'Tf the Lord shuts one door he opens 
another. He has a work for you to do yet." For her 
there was always an open door— always a work to do — 
and most nobly, most lovingly, did she do it. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

STILL WITH THE ARMY. 

"To do her honor! It is beautiful!" How my pen 
hngers over the pages and would make delay among 
the dear memories that come thronging back to me — 
but let me on to my story. 

It was early in the memorable spring of 1861 that 
Mrs. Bickerdyke "enlisted for the war," though it 
was long after that that she was enrolled as a "reg- 
ular" — and, even then, she drew no pay, but gave her- 
self freely to the cause she had espoused. 

Her first work was in the hospitals at Cairo, Illinois, 
where Miss Mary Safford was also at work, trying 
to make more comfortable the four hundred or more 
men who were sick there of fevers of various kinds, 
measles and other diseases, incidental to camp life. 

Miss Saf¥ord, as we can well imagine, welcomed 
Mother Bickerdyke with great joy and gladness and 
they worked together through several months. 

Though she had seen much of the dreaded effects 
of battles, the first one she really witnessed was at 
Fort Donelson, and here it was that she did what has 
been so often told in ''song and story." It must be 
familiar to every one. Her voice would grow tender 
and a far-away look would come in her eyes when 
she spoke of it — as if again she was out under the mid- 
night sky with her lantern, searching over that field 
still thickly strewn with the unburied dead, lest some- 
where among them one still alive might have been 
overlooked. "Oh, those dead faces ! those staring, 
sightless eyes that no tender hand had closed ! Young 
boys who should have been at home with their mothers 
— men everywhere cut down in the pride and bloom 
of manhood — I can never forget it all — never shut it 



72 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

away from my sight." It is known, too, that her brave 
search was rewarded by finding two young men yet 
ahve, one of whom died soon after, but the other Hved 
to return to his home in Dayton, Ohio. Think how 
he would tell the story there, and with what reverent 
love and gratitude those who loved him, and for whom 
she had saved him, would name her name ! Think, too, 
in how many homes all over our beautiful land these 
scenes are duplicated — homes where she holds 

''Such place in all men's thoughts that when they speak 
Of great things done, or to be done, her name is ever on their 
lips. ' ' 

At Fort Donelson she assisted in the removal of 
the wounded to the different hospitals along the river, 
and did valiant work among them. At Paducah, 
Mound City, Pittsburg Landing, Savannah (Tenn.), 
Farmington, luka, and Corinth, she went from hospi- 
tal to hospital, laden always with ''good things" for 
her "boys" — with material comforts of food and cloth- 
ing, and the no less real if less material things that 
cheer and inspire the soul — words and deeds of love 
and mercy. Wherever she went order followed in her 
footsteps — disorder, inefficiency, wrong and injustice 
fled before her approach in ways that must seem no less 
than marvelous to those not understanding her char- 
acter and resources. 

Great quantities of ''supplies, " the making of which 
helped so much to relieve the weary months of wait- 
ing and anxiety for the women of the North, the lov- 
ing but brave mothers, wives and daughters who 
waited and prayed at home while the fathers, husbands 
and brothers fought and fell on southern fields — were 
sent to her by sanitary -commissions and other benevo- 
lent associations, supplies that she always put in the 
way of doing the greatest good to the greatest number 
possible, and that she gave out to the soldier-boys with 
many a cheering word of home and mother, thus giving 
them a greatly increased value and power for good. 
When these supplies ran short, as was sometimes in- 
evitable she would get a great ambulance wagon, and, 



STILL WITH THE ARMY, 73 

with some convalescent soldier, or one detailed from 
the ranks for a driver, would go on long foraging ex- 
peditions into the surrounding country, returning laden 
with all manner of good things for the ''inner man." 
The negroes everywhere were her friends and were 
glad and proud to give her fruits and vegetables from 
their "truck patches," and eggs, chickens, milk and 
butter from their storehouses. Her friends in the 
North sent her great boxes of clothing for her own 
use. She appreciated their kindness, but she kept 
only what she must have for herself, the rest she took 
with her when she went "foraging" and exchanged 
them for provisions for her boys. 

It was not until in November, 1862, that she felt 
obliged to take a vacation. The constant work, the 
responsibilities and anxieties were beginning to tell 
heavily upon even her strong frame, and the longing 
for her children, for the sound of their voices and the 
touch of their hands — the desire to see lands and fields 
untouched by the awful devastation of war, — all this 
drew her irresistibly back, and leaving her hospital 
work in charge of faithful assistants, she returned 
with joy to her home. Let us not attempt to picture 
the meeting there nor seek to intrude upon her feel- 
ings as she clasped those so dear to her again in her 
motherly arms and heard their words of love and 
gladness and felt their caresses. She was the bearer of 
many messages and tokens from the soldiers to the 
home folks — some that brought joy and the hope of 
future meetings — others that made the tears fall fast — 
as trembling hands held the last gifts from a dear one 
whose earthly life was over. In private homes and in 
public meetings she told the story of the brave deeds 
being done in the camp and upon the battlefield, and 
urged the people to give generously for the comfort 
and the sustaining of those who were so bravely giv- 
ing their all to their country's need. The people, 
grateful and appreciative for all she had done, would 
gladly have feted her, but she wanted none of it. 'T 
have done so little compared to what our boys are 
doing, don't make a fuss about it," she said with blunt 



74 MOTHEE BICKEKDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

honesty so characteristic of her. And indeed it was 
not excitement and pubhcity she wanted then or ever, 
but a chance to rest and enjoy the quiet of her home 
with her children about her. She did many Uttle serv- 
ices for them — repaired and replenished their clothing 
and, in so far as she could, prepared them for another 
separation from her. For she had no thought of "quit- 
ting the service." Her work and her experiences had 
made her almost invaluable at the front. She felt 
she was needed there, and again, in January, 1863, she 
said "good bye" to her own loved ones and turned her 
steps southward, beginning her work at Memphis with 
renewed vigor and zeal. Her sons were well cared for 
in the school where she had placed them, and she felt 
herself free to do her work. 

It had always been difficult for her to get as much 
pure milk and as many fresh eggs as she wanted for 
hospital use, and as time passed, and the fortunes of 
war left fields untilled, dairies and poultry yards more 
and more uncared for, this difficulty increased, until, 
in desperation, Mrs. Bickerdyke determined to apply 
once again to the generous people of the North for 
help. Her plan for bringing a drove of cows and hens 
to camp was at first only laughed at, but this added 
to her determination, and finally permission was given 
her to "try it." She secured a twenty days' "fur- 
lough" and ere its expiration had made a trip up 
through Illinois and returned with about one hundred 
fine milch cows "warranted not to give chalk-and- water 
milk," and a thousand hens, each pledged to lay her 
"one egg a day for hospital use." They were cared 
for on an island near Memphis by the "contrabands." 
As the months passed and there was no lack of pure 
milk and fresh eggs, many were they who blessed 
Mrs. Bickerdyke for her foresight and the wisdom of 
her plan. When finally the hospitals were broken up 
because they were no longer needed, these herds and 
flocks were given to the faithful "contrabands" who 
had cared for them. 

From Memphis Mrs. Bickerdyke went to Vicksburg, 
where there was greater need of her services, working 



STILL WITH THE AEMY. 75 

there and at Jackson through the long hot summer 
days, until, early in the fall General Sherman sent her 
North for rest and recuperation, but only for a short 
time, for when he with his troop reached Chattanooga, 
she joined them there. She had a great admiration for 
several of our great generals, but most of all for Sher- 
man. She loved him, and, after the fall of Vicksburg. 
she considered herself as a part of his force and under 
his command, though he used laughingly to say she 
''outranked" him. 

She was put in charge of the field hospital at Mission 
Ridge near Chattanooga, after that dreadful battle 
"above the clouds," in November, 1863, ^^'^^> ^^^ over 
a month, was the only woman there. It is almost im- 
possible to imagine the scene there where the wounded 
and the exhausted assigned to her care numbered over 
two thousand! What a fearful tax upon her strength 
and her sympathies ! When I think of her here, re- 
calling the mangled bodies, the faces distorted with 
pain, torn with shot and shell, the long, long lines of 
them dead, wounded and dying — I think of that pass- 
age in "Rab and His Friends," where, in telling of the 
young medical students who came in eager haste to 
watch the operation performed for poor little 
''Ailie's" relief, it says of them : "In them pity, as an 
emotion, ending in itself or at best in tears and a long 
drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a motive is quick- 
ened, and gains power and purpose." This must have 
been her experience. She had no time for tears nor 
for weak shrinking from the sight of suffering, so 
natural and common to woman. She must needs put 
all her energies into work, her eyes must be clear, her 
hands steady to assist in the operations that, though 
they semed most cruel and meant great pain then, 
were yet most kind, and would give relief in days to 
come. She must go here, there, and everywhere, help- 
ing, cheering and encouraging. One woman among 
over two thousand sufferers ! One of weaker nature 
and of less sure control of self must have been appalled 
by the magnitude of the task, but not Mother Bicker- 



76 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

dyke. Her strength arose to meet the need and she 
was a very host in the work she did. Hers was the 

' ' Insanity of noble minds 
That never falters or abates, 
But labors and endures and waits, 

Till all that it foresees it finds, 
Or what it cannot find — creates!" 

But it told heavily upon her — the terrible scenes at 
Mission Ridge, the incessant work that lasted all 
through the rest of November, through December and 
into January, when she broke down so utterly that she 
was obliged to go home to rest and regain her strength. 
She used to say with a shudder as if again it was all 
before her : "I can never get those awful scenes out of 
r.vj mind and sight. Sleeping or waking they are with 
me. I see the mangled bodies, shot and torn in every 
possible way, I hear the cries and groans. Oh, it is 
horrible ! horrible !" Ah, yes, indeed it was "horrible," 
but her resolution bore her through whatever she un- 
dertook and she could endure any sight if only 
she might help to alleviate the suffering and make the 
condition more bearable. Her pity, her sympathy was 
expressed in action. There were no "tears, idle tears," 
for her. 

Though she was so worn out with all she had en- 
dured, she recuperated quickly, and in March we find 
her again with Sherman and his army going on from 
Chattanooga to Huntsville, from Huntsville to Nash- 
ville, and then on over that terrible road to Resaca. 
Over steep mountains, through narrow passes and 
across streams and rivers she followed fearlessly — do- 
ing everywhere her good work — carrying cheer and 
comfort — wherever she went. Sometimes she would 
make a sudden "raid," as she called it, on the northern 
people for the vegetables and sanitary supplies always 
so much needed, but these "raids" gave her no rest, 
but were all a part of the work she had set herself to 
do. I laughed to hear her tell of her bread baking 
along the line of march, and must almost agree with the 
negroes that there was "magic in her hands," or how 
else did she make good, sweet bread under such ad- 



STILL WITH THE ARMY. 77 

verse circumstances? No wonder the soldiers said 
"Mother Bickerdyke could make bread on a mule's 
back*' — or anywhere else. What memories of home 
those loaves of bread must have awakened in the sol- 
dier's breast and how good they must have tasted after 
hving on "hard tack", and like army "delicacies." 

From Resac'a, after her work was done there, the 
line of march followed to Kingston, to Altoona, and on 
to Atlanta. She follovved her leader through those 
long, hot summer days untiringly — merciless only to 
herself. Another brave, devoted woman went with 
her — Mrs. Eliza Porter — who long before had been 
named "the Angel of the Hospitals." The two 
women were very unlike in person and in methods of 
working, but both were alike devoted to the soldiers 
and eager to alleviate, as far as possible, the horrors of 
war, and they comforted and cheered each other 
through the long marches and in hospital service, and 
were much together and much attached one to the 
other. 

It was at Atlanta that the beloved General McPher- 
son fell, and Mother Bickerdyke must needs close his 
eyes for that last long sleep and send what comfort 
she could to his dear ones at home. She used to say 
laughingly that she "treated an officer just as well as 
a private — if he behaved as well." Shoulder straps, 
stars and bars meant little to her unless they repre- 
sented true worth and gallant service. All this she 
found in General McPherson — he whom Sherman 
loved, and of whom he spoke so highly — and we can 
think how her hands lingered over his cold face, and 
how even as a mother might, she did what she could 
for him who no longer needed earthly services. 

Mrs. Livermore tells us how, while Sherman and his 
brave troops marched on from "Atlanta to the Sea" 
Mrs. Bickerdyke again went North, again busying 
herself with the gathering up of supplies, as "Sherman 
had directed her to meet him when he reached the At- 
lantic coast and to bring to his troops all the supplies 
that could be gathered, and gave her orders for trans- 
portation, on his account, to any desired extent." So 



78 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

perfect was his confidence in her, so sure was he that 
no privilege would be abused by her. As she was ir- 
resistible when in hospital wards, so, too, was she irre- 
sistible when she stood before an audience pleading the 
needs of the soldier boys who, far from home and its 
comforts, were battling bravely for the Union, endur- 
ing hardships and privations such as we can scarcely 
imagine now, that there might be "one country and 
one flag" for us all. The responses to her calls were 
ever quick and generous, and so it was that when at 
Philadelphia in December, 1864, word came to her 
that Sherman had reached the sea at Savannah, she 
was ready with a great boatload of provisions and 
other necessities to start southward once more. How 
her heart must have rejoiced when she heard later of 
that "Christmas gift" of the city of Savannah, with 
one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of am- 
munition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of 
cotton, which Sherman presented to President Lincoln ! 
How thousands of hearts, both North and South, re- 
joiced and gave thanks to the "God of Battles" for this 
victory that we all knew meant so much towards the 
ending of the war ! As Lincoln said in his reply to the 
dispatch from General Sherman announcing the pres- 
entation of this great gift, it brought "those who sat 
in darkness to see a great light"^ — the light of Peace — 
coming. 

* ' Not like a mourner bowed 

For honor lost and dear ones wnstod, 

But proud to inofit n peoplo proud,. 

With eyes that tell o ' triumph tasted. ' ' 

But there was yet much to do ere this day really 
came and in it all Mother Bickerdyke had her faithful 
share. It was while delayed at Wilmington, N. C., 
upon this trip to Savannah that she cared for the An- 
dersonville prisoners, who had been brought there, and 
in doing this contracted the blood poisoning from 
which her hands never fully recovered, and which made 
it necessary for her to have much of her after writing 
done by others. But why attempt to follow her in de- 
tail farther? Others have done this work better than 



STILL WITH THE AEMY. 79 

I can do it now that her Hps are silent. If in all this 
writing, I have not given you such understanding of 
her character as will make you know how surely she 
would pursue her chosen work until all was done that 
could be done by woman's hands and the army was 
disbanded, the soldiers gone to their homes to rest and, 
in time, to enter upon the gentler arts of peace, then 
indeed have I failed of my purpose and written in 
vain. But it was long after the cannons had ceased to 
roar and the guns were "stacked" before Mother Bick- 
erdyke was mustered out with the last of the Illinois 
troops at Camp Butler, Springfield, 111., in March, 
1866. Up to that time she had found plenty to do in 
different hospitals, where sick and wounded soldiers 
yet lingered, and she did it all faithfully to the last. 

Dear old Mother Bickerdyke ! Though the war re- 
vealed to us and to the world the strength and no- 
bility of our American women, both North and South, 
there was among them all but one Mother Bickerdyke ! 
Though many did nobly, none excelled her — few, in- 
deed, equaled her in her self-sacrificing heroism and 
courage, her patient endurance, her sustained efforts 
and ability, her true worth and modesty. 

In the grand review ordered by the President of 
Sherman's and Meade's armies at Washington, May 
23-24, 1865, she might have had a post of honor by 
Mrs. Sherman's side, but she would not take it. She 
rode into the city with the troops ''mounted upon a 
glossy saddle horse and wearing a simple calico dress 
and a sun-bonnet," as Mrs. Chase tells us, but she 
dropped out of the ranks almost immediately, and be- 
gan her usual work of giving aid and refreshment to 
the w^eary soldiers — of whom there were many. "I 
never considered myself ornamental or worth making 
a show of," she said, "but I can be useful and that's all 
I want." In speaking of the fact that the dress and 
bonnet she wore that day of the "grand review" 
were sold for one hundred dollars and kept as "relics" 
of the war, she said : "To think any one would give 
that for my old dress and bonnet ! What did I do with 
the money? Why, I used it for 'my boys,' of course. 



80 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS 1 KNEW HER. 

It didn't go far where the need was so great, but it 
helped, and I was glad of it." 

She used to tell us, too, of seeing that beautiful flag 
message, ''Hold the fort, for I am coming," flashed by 
General Sherman's orders from Kenesaw to Altoona, 
and how impressive it was. This was but one of the 
many *'side lights" of her army life that remained al- 
ways clear and vivid in her memory, and that she loved 
to recall as we sat in her cozy sitting room working 
and talking of the days that had passed and the scenes 
that, we hope, may never again be repeated in our 
beautiful land. 



CHAPTER IX. 

IN NEW YORK AND ELSEWHERE. 



And to soothe, and to solace, to help and to heal 
The sick world that leans on her." 

This was Mother Bickerdyke, and it is not to be 
wondered at that soon after she was mustered out, we 
find her serving as matron and mother in general to 
the inmates of the ''Hom.e of the Friendless" in Chi- 
cago, but though there were one hundred and fifty 
under her care in this home, the number seemed very 
few to her and the work all too small for her. As she 
said, "it was too much like working in a peck meas- 
ure," and she must perforce have something more 
upon which to spend herself and her splendid re- 
sources. Chicago, like many another city of the North, 
was overrun with discharged soldiers who found it 
hard to settle to the quiet pursuits of peace, who 
missed alike the excitement and the discipline of the 
army life, and who needed some one to help them 
locate homes for their families. Their meager pay as 
private soldiers had been used up as fast as it was 
paid them, and now they found themselves sadly des- 
titute, without money or work, and yet with fami- 
lies looking to them for support. What was more 
natural than that in such need they should turn to 
Mother Bickerdyke, the one who had helped them over 
so many hard places already, and was still as a rock 
of defense to them? They flocked to her with their 
stories of wants and needs, telling her now, as in the 
dark days of the war, of their hopes and ambitions — 
their desires. She solved the problem, as was to be 
expected. The broad prairies of Kansas, whose soil 
her farmers are wont to say is the "deepest and rich- 
est ever made," covered with tall grasses and beauti- 



82 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

ful flowers, with fine rivers and streams flowing here 
and there through them, with natural resources so rich 
and varied that they are scarcely yet all known — - 
these prairies stretched out inviting hands to the 
settlers and gave promise of homes to whoever was 
willing to work for them. Though Mrs. Bickerdyke 
had never then been in Kansas she had heard much 
of it and it seemed to her just the place for her boys, 
and in the summicr of 1867 she took a little ''leave of 
absence" from the home and went out to see for her- 
self. What she saw pleased her greatly and, returning 
again to Chicago, she busied herself at once in finding 
ways and means for transporting some of the soldiers 
and their famiHes there. As ever in answer to her ap- 
peals her wealthy friends came to her aid, generously 
"upholding her hands," and thus it was that during 
the next two years she aided over three hundred fam- 
ilies to settle in Kansas upon soldiers' claims that in 
time grew into beautiful and prosperous homes. Gen- 
eral Sherman was at that time in command of the sol- 
diers stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, and gave her 
much material aid and encouragement in her good 
work. 

"Where the treasure is there wiU the heart be." 
Mrs. Bickerdyke's heart was with the soldiers in their 
brave efforts to build up homes in Kansas and she 
soon followed them there, taking with her her two 
sons. She started an eating house, that soon became 
known as "The Mother Bickerdyke Home," in Salina 
— then a frontier town of comparatively few inhabi- 
tants. But, while possessing all of the attributes of a 
successful home maker, and such executive ability as 
is very rarely found in a woman, and not excelled 
by men, there was yet something lacking in her finan- 
cial management. Perhaps it was her too generous 
charities — ^the quick reaching for whatever money she 
might have on hand when a pitiful story was told her — 
or a case of destitution came to her knowledge. Per- 
haps she trusted too much and did not enforce the 
"pay-as-you-go" rule sufficiently. Just what it was I 
do not know, but for some reason this venture was 



IN NEW YORK AND ELSEWHEEE. 83 

a failure in a business way — from a financial stand- 
point — and she gave it up in 1869 and went to New 
York to work under the direction of the City Board 
of Missions. Horace Greeley and many other eminent 
people, including Henry Ward Beecher and his wife, 
became her warm friends and aided her in many ways 
and here she spent four years, literally "going about 
doing good" about the "Master's business" as truly 
as Jesus was in his work along the Galileean shores 
and among the beautiful hills of Palestine. As with 
him the "maimed, the halt and the blind," the sick and 
the poor flocked about her, and she went in and out 
of their miserable homes with words of blessing and 
of healing ever upon her lips, and in her hands in 
place of Bibles and tracts she bore brushes and combs, 
soap and towels, knowing there could not be godliness 
without greater cleanliness and the sick bodies must 
needs be cured before the souls could be awakened to 
the need of spiritual things. Up and down the city 
streets, she went in and out the destitute homes for four 
long years, the while she said, "My heart yearned for 
the sweet breath of the prairies and my sons there." But 
not until she had done something near what she went 
to do would she turn back. Into the hospitals, within 
the dreadful walls of the Tombs, into Castle Garden, 
out to Blackwell's Island, here, there and everywhere, 
it almost seems, she went, with everywhere a trail of 
"God bless you," of gratitude and love following her. 
Now and then she would meet one of her boys in blue 
whose tender greeting and glad recall of services ren- 
dered in some southern hospital or upon the battle- 
field, was like balm to her heart. Those who sat in 
high places — as the world counts them — delighted to 
honor her. Vast sums of money were entrusted to 
her, to be used as she saw fit in her beautiful chari- 
ties, and everywhere her worth and ability was recog- 
nized and honored. What wonder is it that she was 
invincible and unconquerable, that, as her son said, she 
"always succeeded" with such a wealth of love for- 
ever flowing around her? Upborne on the hearts of 
the people, strengthened and encouraged ever by their 



84 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

faith and trust, by their ardent admiration and de- 
votion, she could not fail. 

There is no power equal to that of love — the united 
love of a people — -and this Mother Bickerdyke had in 
fullest measure wherever she was known. This sus- 
tained her and gave her a power that seemed almost 
miraculous at times. It was while she was at work 
in New York in 1871 that the fire fiend raged in the 
Michigan forests and in Chicago. The bitter need 
of a stricken people cried aloud in her ears, and she 
went to them laden again with gifts of money and pro- 
visions furnished her by her wealthy friends. These 
she distributed with that sure instinct and wisdom 
that marked her work everywhere. After which she 
turned again to New York and her work there. In 
1874 we find her again in Kansas, called back by the 
longing of her sons for a home and mother in that 
home — and by the strong desire of her own heart for 
a little time of rest and quiet. It is easy to think with 
what joy these sons — Hiram and James — welcomed 
her, and how gladly they set up their "household 
gods" in the little home on the prairie. But it could 
not last — there was always a need and a call for her 
elsewhere, always those whose claims upon her she 
felt were more imperative than that of the sons who 
''could wait" and get along without much that she felt 
bound to give to others. 

There were Indian raids, grasshoppers and drouths 
for the people to contend with and to despoil them 
of what few comforts they had been able to gather 
about them, and in every need or crisis they cried out 
to Mother Bickerdyke for aid — or, not waiting for the 
cry, she felt the need and prepared to answer it. 
Again and again and yet again ten times over in the 
years 1874 and 1875 she made trips back to Illinois to 
solicit aid and bring supplies to those who were so 
bravely fighting against heavy odds and discourage- 
ment to make homes for those dear to them. Rumors 
of her brave efiforts and untiring work reached away 
to Boston, and friends there sent funds to aid her. 
Hundreds of settlers were benefited, hundreds of 



IN NEW YOEK AND ELSEWHERE. 85 

homes saved because of what she did, and the people 
of Kansas "arose and called her blessed." In the State 
Legislature a resolution was passed thanking her for 
all she had done and everywhere throughout the state 
her name was spoken with loving gratitude. All this 
was as balm to her spirit, yet it did not save her from 
weariness. She felt the need of complete rest and 
change and her thoughts turned with longing towards 
the balmy fields and sunny skies of California. There, 
as elsewhere, her "boys" were scattered, and they 
urged her to come to them. Her sons, too, were 
anxious for her and urged her to go and thus the next 
two years, 1876 and 1877, were spent in as near idl<:- 
ness as she ever permitted to herself. She traveled 
from place to place in California, she visited in the 
homes of the old soldiers there, she saw the big trees, 
the mountains, the beautiful, fertile valleys, she went 
with friends to Yellowstone Park, she rested every- 
where and enjoyed everything, and gradually the 
bloom of health came again to her cheeks and the 
painful jangling of her nerves was stilled, and she 
longed again for some steady work. 



CHAPTER X. 

I have read somewhere of an old EngHsh parsonage 
that has deeply engraved over its portal a quaint Saxon 
legend 

'*Do tc jNTextc -Cbynqc:' 

In my thought it seems connected with Mother 
Bickerdyke for she turned so quickly and so easily 
from one kind of work to another. The bright star 
of duty shone ever before her and she followed it 
faithfully. 

Though she called these first two years in Califor- 
nia a time of rest, she had by no means been idle. She 
found the poor and needy there as she had found 
them in the East and must be at work for them. 
There, too, were old soldiers who, though there was 
no question of their need or deserts, yet found much 
difficulty in getting the government to grant them 
pensions, and here Mother Bickerdyke gave great 
aid, helping many a poor man to secure a recognition 
of his claim and the granting of the pension he had 
so richly earned. This work once begun was never 
laid down until very shortly before her death, and 
many indeed were, and are still, the men who had 
cause to bless her for her timely aid. It was a work 
strictly to her liking, and she threw herself into it 
with the same zeal and enthusiasm, the same forget- 
fulness of self and her needs that she had shown in 
earlier days of army life. She sought through rec- 



88 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

ords and muster rolls, she traveled untold miles in 
going from place to place wherever the evidence she 
sought for could be found, she interviewed state and 
national officials, urging everywhere the gospel of 
good sense and justice, pleading the great service 
rendered by the private soldier and his claim upon the 
people, in fact she did all that was possible to her 
that justice might be done and the government might 
prove its gratitude to those who had made it still pos- 
sible that ours should be a "land of the free and the 
home of the brave." And not this alone. Besides her 
work for the soldier, she helped greatly in California 
and elsewhere to establish homes for the destitute wid- 
ows and children of those who had fallen while doing 
a soldier's duty. True worth is ever modest and seeks 
to hide its needs away from the public gaze ; but 
Mother Bickerdyke had a way of finding all such 
cases out and of putting them in a way to be cared 
for and cheered. 

But while helping others to live she must herself 
live. She gave freely to others but scorned charity 
for herself. In order that she might be independent 
and self supporting she applied for a position in the 
government mint in San Francisco, and with several 
generals as ''backers" had no difficulty in obtaining 
it, and here she spent several peaceful, happy years, 
with always her beautiful charities to fill in the odd 
hours of her day and lift her life above monotony or 
drudgery. Indeed work could never be drudgery tu 
her, for she brought a beautiful spirit to it ever and 
did all she had to do as "seeing Him who is invisible." 

But what had the government done for her while 
she was so busy in doing for others? Was she who 
had given so much, she who served through five long 
years as faithfully as ever soldier served, giving up 
all that woman holds dearest — home and the training 
and companionship of her children — she who gave 
herself in a way that is rarely imitated and never ex- 
celled, who followed from hospital to hospital, from 
battlefield to battlefield, braving alike the fearful cold 
of winter and the no less fearful heat of summer ; who 



THE NEXT THING. 89 

saw sights too dreadful for woman's eyes and that 
haunted her through all the years that came after, was 
she cared for as she deserved? The soldier had his 
monthly pay — a pittance surely — and yet something; 
he had food and clothing and was cared for as well 
as he could be under the circumstances. What did 
she have? Who can believe that she served all those 
dreadful years with no recompense save that of an 
approving conscience and the love of the soldier and 
his friends? This is much, and she would not have 
been without it, but would it have been lessened in 
any way had justice been done her and a liberal sum 
marked opposite her name each month on the pay- 
roll? Is this the boasted gratitude of republics? 
This our standard of justice? This woman saved the 
government many thousands of dollars' worth of hos- 
pital and sanitary supplies and brought to the front 
many more thousands of dollars' worth of clothing, 
vegetables and other needed articles. It is even said 
of her that "her services were worth more to the army 
than that of all its brigadier generals." She spent 
herself royally in service ; she came and went untir- 
ingly ; she gave all — all ! and what did the govern- 
ment do for her in return? 

Oh, men ! Cover your faces for shame while I tell 
that twenty long years after she was mustered out, 
when she had grown old and broken, and yet somehow 
still shamed younger women with the multitude of her 
charities, the strength and beauty of her work — 
twenty years after — she was granted a pension of 
twenty-five paltry dollars a month ! Oh, the shame of 
it! the bitter wrong and injustice! She did not ask 
for a pension. She was too noble to ask for one — her 
friends must do it for her. They tried to get a bill 
through Congress aHowing her fifty dollars a month, 
and this w^as but a fraction of what should have been 
given her. But though Generals Grant, Sherman, 
Pope and Logan spoke in her behalf, and would fain 
have had it otherwise ; though Mrs. Livermore and 
other influential friends and co-workers did all they 
could, the bill was "amended by the committee" and 



90 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

only twenty-five dollars monthly allowed her. Let 
that day — May 9, 1886 — be branded as a day of our 
nation's shame. Twenty-five dollars a month — three 
hundred a year after all she had done ! Think how gen- 
erously we deal with the widows of our generals and 
other high officers — women who, though they bore 
loss, loneliness and anxieties in common with all of 
the women of the North and South — yet did nothing, 
gave nothing in comparison with what Mother Bick- 
erdyke did and gave. How could we, oh, how could 
we have done it? How it must have hurt her proud 
heart and outraged her sense of justice — and yet, no ! 
So little did she think of or value self she was glad 
even of this amount. "It is so much more to work 
with. I can do a great deal of good with it," she said, 
and went on her beautiful way bravely, uncomplain- 
ingly. Now it is too late to do for her, but even yet 
the government should acknowledge its sin towards 
her and show its repentance by doing some worthy 
deed for those she loved — the few of her "boys" that 
are still left with us. 

Though the government seemed ungrateful, she 
knew the individual soldier was not so. Wherever 
she went they — the soldiers — flocked to see her. Par- 
ties were given in her honor and receptions tendered 
her. And no old soldiers' reunion was complete where 
it was possible for her to go without her. I have 
heard her tell how the "boys" — white haired and gray- 
bearded, grandfathers and, in many instances, great- 
grandfathers, but yet her "boys" — always crowded 
around her and what tender recollections they re- 
called, sometimes with tears as they spoke of a fallen 
comrade, and again with hearty laughter as the mem- 
ory of some amusing incident of camp life came back 
to them. They would beg for some memento of her 
to carry home "and keep always" — and she would 
give them a handkerchief, a flower, or even a piece of 
the dress she wore "snipped out" regardless of its 
price or worth, or of the condition in which it left 
her. "What did it matter so that the boys wanted it 
and were pleased," she would say; "I had always 



THE NEXT THING 91 

other dresses and more handkerchiefs at home." An 
indulgent, loving old mother was she, and if she 
spoiled the boys sometimes it was all for love's 
dear sake" and because she would make all around 
her happy, and ever 

"Her life, her work, each kindly thought, 
On other lives their sweetness brought; 
Enshrined in hearts is her renown, 
Their love supreme shall be her crown." 



CHAPTER XL 

BACK FROM CALIFORNIA A LETTER TO THE SOLDIERS, 

''One of these clays we shall know the reason, 
Haply, of much that perplexes us now. ' ' 

And then, perhaps, we shall know why it is that so 
often the young and joyous, those standing with glad 
anticipations of future usefulness upon the threshold 
of life, wdio are dreaming dreams and seeing visions 
of what is to be, and who feel within them the stir of 
mighty thoughts and ambitions — perhaps we shall 
know why these are taken from earth and the old 
and feeble, those who are worn and weary and long 
for rest, to whom life seems as a struggle that is past, 
its glory gone, its dreams forgotten, these are left 
'yet a little longer." 

It was a longing cry for ''mother" from the lips of 
her beloved step-daughter that called Mother Bicker- 
dyke back from California early in 1887. This daugh- 
ter was a fair young girl in her "teens" when Mrs. 
Bickerdyke began her work in the army, and went 
to Covington, Ky., to live with a relative when her 
home with "mother" was broken up. There she had 
remained a dear and useful member of home, church, 
and society. She was a sweet singer and was often 
called upon to aid in concerts and ''rnusicales," and in 
the church choir. But now a dread disease had fast- 
ened upon her, from which she knew she could not 
recover, and her heart turned with strong longing to 
the noble woman who was the only mother she could 
remem.ber. Not only the mother, but her brothers 
also hastened to her bedside and remained with her 
until the end. All that love could do — all that money 
could do was done to stay the step of Death — but in 



94 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

vain. The suffering ceased in July, the feeble hand 
let go its hold of the strong hands of those who loved 
her to clasp that of the angel and be led out to larger 
life and higher service elsewhere, and the mother who 
had faced death so many times, and had gone with so 
many down to the very gates of death, she who was 
so brave and strong to bear sorrow, found her heart 
rent anew with anguish, but through it all she heard 
the call to higher things — that call that sounds for us 
each one in every sorrow, so only we are strong 
enough to hear it — and her soul responded to it. She 
came from that chamber of Death consecrated anew 
to her work of love and charity, with all her sympa- 
thies deepened and purified, with greater power to do 
and to be — to cheer and to encourage. 

She returned to Kansas when her work in Coving- 
ton was over, living with her son. Prof. James R. 
Bickerdyke at Bunker Hill, where he was engaged 
as principal of the schools, and later, when he 
was elected superintendent ot the schools of Russell 
county, she moved with him to Russell. Ever after 
this her home v/as in Kansas, though she made fre- 
quent trips elsewhere, chiefly to attend soldiers' re- 
unions and to further her work as a pension attorney. 
She was instrumental in securing pensions for a great 
many soldiers and nurses. In this work, as in every- 
thing she undertook, she was untiring and successful 
where one of less courage and determination must 
have failed. The wants and needs of her soldier boys 
seemicd ever in her mind and for them she did her 
chief work, but she did not confine herself to it alone. 
Any "righteous cause" might be sure of help from her. 
Nor did she wait until a cause grew popular before 
espousing it, but was ever ready to share the "meager 
crusts" with the brave few who stand in the forefront 
of every movement or cause. She believed in the right 
of suffrage for women as for men, and when this was 
to be voted upon in Kansas she addressed the follow- 
ing letter "To the Heroes of 1861-1865." I copy it 
from a local paper in which it was published shortly 
after it was written, in June, 1893. Kansas is espe- 



BACK FEOM CALIFOENIA. 95 

cially a "soldier state'' and the "soldier vote" was at 
that time, and may still be, considered as the decisive 
vote. But to the letter: 

Comrades — It is with, deep and i3rofound gratitude that we 
recall how promptly and willingly you obeyed the call of that 
grand man, our President, Abraham Lincoln, and with loyal 
hearts and true, you swelled the ranks to over a million men, 
a million of young, brave, patriotic, strong men, who gave 
themselves as a willing sacrifice on the altar of their country, 
and marched with willing feet to victory, and many of them 
to death. Over six hundred battlefields were baptized with 
the heart's blood of our best young men. You stood shoulder 
to shoulder and braved all dangers of the march, the camp, the 
battlefield, the hospital and prison for a principle, and never 
stopped until the union was saved, and the last vestige of 
human slavery was forever banished from our land. Then 
you returned to the peaceful pursuits of life, made pleasant, 
prosperous homes, and have made Kansas one of the fore- 
most states in the Union. Yes, Kansas owes her existence to 
the boys in blue, and to their wives and daughters, and the 
grand old hero John Brown, whose ''soul is marching on." 

But your locks are turning gray, your steps are no longer 
firm and elastic as in 1861. Yet while you cannot endure the 
march, the fatigue and exposure as before, you are neverthe- 
less leaders at home, and you have an influence no other class 
of men can exert for the welfare of the state. 

You did your duty nobly while the nation was bleeding at 
every pore. You fought her battles and won her victories. 
While you were fighting in the field woman was at home 
caring for the family and loved ones, bowing around the 
family altar pleading for you, and, with woman's love and 
energy, planning and organizing the great sanitary commis- 
sion, which sent supplies to the hospitals; and woman's warm 
heart and tender hands cared for the sick and wounded, and 
from hearts full of tenderness and love came encouraging let- 
ters that cheered the lonely hours. Many a time when the 
mail was distributed we have seen tears of joy trickle down 
the manly cheek of the soldier, as he read a letter from 
mother, sister, wife or sweetheart, and oft have we answered 
those letters for those who from wounds or disease were un- 
able to write. A man who has courage to battle for the right 
has a warm, loving heart. 

We stood by you, and cared for you, and helped you in the 
struggle for national supremacy and human freedom! We 
now appeal to you as true, brave, noble, generous, chivalrous, 
heroic men to stand by and assist us by voting for us to have 
the right of ballot. We are interested as much in the govern- 
ment of the land as are men. Our homes are to be protected; 
our children are to be protected in their rights. Our inter- 
ests are one, we are a unit, and we ask you to stand by us 



96 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

in Kansas as we stood by you in all the hard fought battles. 
In the fiercest of battles women were there, and in the hos- 
pitals. Everywhere we have done what we could for you. 
In honor you have preferred them — ' * The lords of creation 
have women obeyed, ' ' and she has crowned him with honors, 
as wisdom could. We ask you as comrades to vote and work 
for the amendment enfranchising women. 

Yours in Fraternity, Charity and Loyalty, 

Mother Bickerdyke. 

This letter — simple as truth is simple — direct as 
truth is direct— thrilled through with her strong de- 
sire for justice to her sex — was read at Memorial 
Day gatherings, and was listened to with the loving 
attention that greeted all that came from her lips or 
pen. The report of the one committee appointed to 
act upon it that I have preserved is probably similar to 
that of many others. This is as follows : 

Whereas, Mother Bickerdyke, so well and favorably known 
to the soldiers of Kansas, and whose services to them and the 
country are universally recognized by them. And 

Whereas, The question of enfranchising women in the 
state of Kansas is to be voted upon at the next November 
election as an amendment to the constitution of the state. 
And 

Whereas, Mother Bickerdyke has appealed in a circular let- 
ter to the soldiers of Kansas to support and aid the proposi- 
tion by their votes and influence; therefcre be it 

Resolved, By the soldiers assembled on Memorial Day at 
Bridgeport, No. 131, G. A. E., that they recognize the eminent 
authority from which the appeal has come and that they will 
in this duty to their country and its noble women endeavor, as 
in the past, to be loyal to both and perform their duty as 
true patriots. 

I omit the signatures for obvious reasons. 

This letter of Mother Bickerdyke's must prove to 
all who may read it that she was not "illiterate" in 
any way, but could express her thoughts with ease and 
grace on any subject that interested her. 

As proof of the western soldiers' great love for 
her let me state that before her pension was allowed, 
they proposed to tax themselves a certain sum yearly 
to maintain her above want and in the ease most 
women of her age — broken as she was by the great 
hardships she had endured — would desire, but she 



BACK FROM CALIFORNIA. 97 

would have none of it. ''Give it to some poor soldier 
or his family, but not to me," she said, and her word 
was ''law" here as elsewhere. 

Though the letter I have given here did not bring 
the result she hoped for it could not have failed in 
awakening thought on the subject and it will yet bear 
fruit, since no earnest effort for the right can fail. 
Time is long and some day justice will be done to all. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LETTER OF A MUTUAL FRIEND. 
He loves Christ best who serves men most. — Lowell. 

Among the mutual friends of Mother Bickerdyke's 
and mine is one lady who is truly of a family of sol- 
diers, her father, her four brothers, her husband and 
her brother-in-law all having been in the army for 
longer or shorter periods. Her father was also a gov- 
ernment scout for a number of years and all did val- 
iant service for the preservation of the Union. Be- 
cause of this and because of her own personal worth 
and ability, her endearing womanly qualities, she was 
a valued friend of Mother Bickerdyke's and lived in 
close intimacy with her. At my request she gladly 
added the following letter to the story I am trying to 
tell : 

' ' Mother Bickerdyke — the renowned and much-loved army 
nurse during our civil war. There are too many veterans yet 
living who venerate her memory and testify to her loving, 
faithful service to the sick and suffering soldiers for me to 
hope to add much more. I have been closely associated with 
her at some of the reunions of the veterans. I have stood 
by her side and have seen old gray-haired men come, with out- 
stretched arms and tears coursing down their cheeks, saying, 
''I want to see Mother Bickerdyke once more. You nursed 
me when I was sick and wounded nigh unto death back to life 
and health. I am so glad to see you once more." Such ex- 
clamations were frequently heard as she stood on the platform 
and the boys in blue came to greet her. It seemed to me 
there was a heavenly radiance in her face. It was a halo 
of such holy light, such peace, such joy that she really was 
the most beautiful woman I ever saw. 

I have heard her relate the story of the soldier who was 
left upon the battlefield, desperately wounded, after it was 
thought every live man had been found and removed from the 
field. After the wounded had been made as comfortable as it 
was possible to make them, in "the wee small hours of the 
night ' ' she sat down to rest by an upstairs window, and lis- 

LOFC. 



100 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

tened out of the window over the field strewn with the dead 
to see if any signs of the living could be heard. She heard 
a faint moan. She called her faithful ' ' Pete ' ' — a man de- 
tailed to help her on any or all occasions that might arise. 
She filled a canteen with ' ' hot toddy, ' ' gave Pete a lantern, 
and they started in the direction of the sound she had heard. 
As they came nearer the moaning became more distinct, and 
she knew that some poor fellow had been missed. When they 
came to him and tried to lift him up they found his clothes 
were frozen in the ice. (It was at Fort Donelson, where the 
soldiers, especially the wounded ones, suffered so terribly from 
being obliged to lie on the cold, wet ground with little or 
nothing to protect them.) She sent Pete back for an ax to 
chop him loose. She set her lantern on a broken cannon that 
was near by and administered her restorative to the poor boy, 
and when Pete returned they were ready to chop him out and 
take him to the hospital. This man recovered and, in after 
years, she had the pleasure of meeting him at some reunion. 

I said to her : "1 have read how the soldiers hugged Mother 
Bickerdyke and I do not wonder at it. " " Hug me ! " she 
said, **you would think they would break every bone in my 
body ! ' ' 

Mother Bickerdyke undoubtedly had heard that the way 
to a man's heart is through his stomach, as she trapped in 
this way the young lieutenant who came to arrest her for 
burning the breastworks at Chattanooga, when there was no 
other way to keep the sick and wounded soldiers from freez- 
ing but by using the great logs of which these breastworks 
were made for keeping the fires burning. This oflQcer walked 
into her hospital and asked why she was burning up their 
fortifications. ' ' To keep my boys from freezing, ' ' she an- 
swered, and he returned, ' ' Consider yourself arrested. ' ' 
"Well, lieutenant," she said, "just wait a minute. I have 
some nice, warm corn bread and milk for supper. Sit down 
and eat with the rest. ' ' He did so and while he was busy 
filling up the inner man she hurried to General Thomas' head- 
quarters, and going up to him said, ' ' General Thomas, I am 
under arrest, and have come myself to report to you." 

"Why, what is this? Who has arrested you?" asked the 
surprised general. She told her story (and Mrs. Livermore, 
too, has told it in a very interesting way in "My Story 
of the. War"). The outcome was that the flippant young 
lieutenant was himself marched to the general's headquarters 
under arrest, while Mother Bickerdyke got into the ambulance 
that had so hurriedly taken her there and went back to her 
quarters to continue burning breastworks to keep her boys com- 
fortable. 

I have also heard her tell of the poor fellow who had his 
neck broken, or dislocated, so that if his head moved the pain 
was most excruciating. He had to be carried from the field 
up a long hill. There were men to carry him, but who could 



LETTER OF A MUTUAL FRIEND. 101 

properly support that head? It was raining, muddy and slip- 
pery. Mother Bickerdyke, when called upon, said, "I cannot 
support that head and keep it steady over such a way. ' ' 
(Strange words from her lips — ''I cannot.") Instantly, as 
she said, her husband's voice came to her as plainly as she 
ever heard it saying, "Yes, you can, Mary Ann." (That 
voice that had been silent for such long, lonely years — what 
joy to her to hear it again — come back, as it were, from the 
so-called dead to tell her she could do whatever she needed to 
do.) Thus aided and inspired she took the poor man's head 
between her strong hands and supported it safely up the hill 
and to the hospital. It would be interesting to know if this 
man recovered, but this I do not now remember, and the good 
mother has gone where we may not question her. 

I have heard her say so many times that she did not want 
any more written about her, that there was too much already; 
but I believe there is one phase of her life that has not until 
now been touched upon — her home life. In that lies the beauty 
and grandeur of true motherhood. It has been my pleasure 
and privilege to enter the sanctum of that home where she 
and her youngest son lived. I never witnessed truer mutual 
devotion than existed between them — mother and son. The 
life of the son spoke volumes for the training that grand 
mother gave him. Oh, the pity that every mother does not 
realize the God-given gift of her children, and strive, as did 
this mother, to send out pure, noble men and women into the 
world! Jails and penitentiaries would become things of the 
past were this so. This son was our county superintendent 
of public instruction for several years. He not only labored 
to build up our schools in an educational way, but, realizing 
that ''In moral worth God excellence placed," he unceasingly 
labored to bring them to a high moral standard. His every 
effort was to give to the world pupils that were manly and 
womanly, a credit to home and society. Such was his life, 
built up and fortified by that mother, that were I to write 
his epitaph it would be ' ' J. R. Bickerdyke, Man — God 's noblest 
work. ' ' 

She has told me how she and this son, upon receiving a 
letter from her daughter in Covington, Ky., telling them she 
was suffering from that dread disease — cancer — immediately 
left home and business and went to her, remaining till the last 
though it involved them in great financial loss. In her great, 
loving heart money could never come between duty and self. 
Her home life was plain and sensible — nothing ''puffed up" 
or affected — just plain, loving Mother Bickerdyke to the last. 

I remember how in the trying times of drought and failure 
of crops, when our people had more or less encumbered their 
homes with mortgages, Mother Bickerdyke, lingering a mo- 
ment in some place of business, overheard two schemers talk- 
ing. She heard enough to convince her they were planning to 
foreclose a mortgage and take a certain poor man's home 



102 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

away from him. She hurried home to her son and said, 
' ' Jimmy, I want you to take me immediately to Mr, Case 's. 
He is going to lose his home; they are j)lanning to take it from 
him very soon." Jimmy very willingly did as she requested. 
She saw the man, told him of the plot and helped him arrange 
to meet his obligations. In telling me of this incident long 
afterward she said, ' ' Today Mr. Case has his home in peace 
and plenty," and her satisfaction seemed as great as though 
it was her own home saved. 

The charity of this dear old mother in civil life w^as only 
bounded by the limit of her means. Her time and energy 
were always ready to be devoted to the soldier — and to others 
in need. I know personally of instances where she w^ent, car- 
rying delicacies and medicines at her own expense and re- 
mained and eared for the poor suffering man until death re- 
leased him. She had great influence with Senator Plumb in 
securing pensions. Many troublesome, intricate applications 
were unraveled by her industry and perseverance. She had 
the satisfaction of knowing that the disabled, deserving soldier 
had at last received the pittance which his government so pro- 
fusely promised him in the hour of its dire distress. Noble 
Mother Bickerdyke! Eest thou in peace and joy! m. j, h. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY. 

^ ' For thee ! For thee ! May the good saints bless the day 
thou wert born! ' ' 

This must have been the thought of many Kansans 
on that memorable nineteenth of July, 1897, when they 
celebrated the eightieth anniversary of Mother Bick- 
erdyke's birth. 

She was living then at Bunker Hill, a small town in 
the eastern part of Russell county, where her son, 
James, had charge of the schools, the whirligig of 
partisan politics having ousted him from the office of 
county superintendent and left those of us who valued 
high, faithful service and efficiency to deplore the 
mixing of things political with things educational in 
a way to deprive us of so worthy a head for our 
schools. When men have grown wiser, when they 
"vote as they pray" and know there can be no hard and 
fast lines drawn between their religious and their po- 
litical duty ; when men are rated above party and our 
officers are elected because of their worth and ability 
to serve the people in doing the duties of the office that 
claims them, rather than because of money or *'polit- 
ical pull," we shall be able to retain in office such men 
as this son of Mother Bickerdyke. 

As it was, when his last term expired in 1895, he 
and his mother with him, moved from Russell to Sa- 
lina, where he had secured a professorship in the Wes- 
leyan College there. For some reason that I do not 
now recall, he only stayed one year there and then re- 
turned to Bunker Hill ; and thus it was that the eight- 



104 MOTHEE BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

ieth birthday found them there, and there because of 
Mother Bickerdyke's presence the great interest of the 
day centered, though it was celebrated all over the 
state by order of Theodosius Botkin, then Department 
Commander of Kansas G. A. R. A local paper, printed 
a few days later, gives this account of what was done : 

Without a doubt Bunker Hill had the best celebration in 
the state of Kansas on last Monday, though "Mother Bicker- 
dyke day ' ' was celebrated in almost every other town in the 
state. The presence of Mother Bickerdyke gave to the occa- 
sion a dignity and fullness of purpose, a spirit of veneration 
and admiration that could not have been experienced in any 
other community. Mother Bickerdyke has friends by the 
score in this county, and all who could went to Bunker Hill 
to help our "mother of the nation'^ celebrate her eightieth 
birthday. 

At an early hour, in fact on the previous night, friends 
came from all directions. The immense crowd that finally 
gathered there was variously estimated, some judges putting 
the number as high as fifteen hundred — a large crowd to be 
cared for in a town the size of Bunker Hill. During the fore- 
noon the doors of the Bickerdyke home were thrown open to 
the admiring and sometimes curious visitors. Professor Bick- 
erdyke attended to the duties of reception committee in a 
cheerful and hospitable manner, and Mother Bickerdyke had a 
kind word and a friendly handclasp for all who came to do her 
honor. 

At the tent (a very large one was put up for this occasion), 
where the Bunker Hill band was furnishing some excellent 
music, the exercises were begun some time before noon. Rev. 
Mr. Dixon, a former minister in this community (he whose 
death a short time before her own affected her so sadly) was 
called upon to deliver the address of welcome. He welcomed 
the guests in the name of our flag, the patriotism of the boys 
in blue and in the name of the town. His address was not 
only a welcome greeting, but it was a tribute to the flag of 
our country. 

The crowd in the afternoon had been considerably swelled 
by the arrival of the Russell delegation, accompanied by the 
Russell band. Soon after this the two bands proceeded to 
Mother Bickerdyke's home to escort her to the tent, where the 
exercises begun in the morning were continued. Mother Bick- 
erdyke and Mrs. G. A. Weed, who had spent four years in 
the field as army nurse, and was at that time living in Rus- 
sell, were seated in a carriage, to which a long rope was 
attached, and were drawn to the tent by sixty veterans. The 
Glee Club of Bunker Hill opened the program by singing 
"When the Old Flag Waves," after which the audience 
joined them in singing ' ' America. ' ' Chairman of the day, 



THE EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY. 105 

Commander Botkin, then introduced Department Chaplain B. 
F. Pugh, of Wellington, who responded to the address of 
welcome, which was followed by music by the Eussell band. 

The next speaker, and the principal one of the day, was 
Assistant Adjutant General of the G. A. R Lew Hajiback, 
at one time our representative in congress. Mr. Hanback's 
address was a general review of the opening days of the 
war, the first call for volunteers, their trials and sufferings, 
and his personal experience in the army hospital, where he 
was sent to die. That he did not die he ascribes to the cheer- 
ful and motherly ministrations of one of those kind souls who, 
like Mother Bickerdyke, endangered their lives that the boys 
might have proper care. This was only the introduction that 
led to a final eloquent and sympathetic tribute to army nurses 
and the women of 1861-65 in general, and to Mother Bicker- 
dyke in particular. 

In the memory of all the soldiers dead, and in behalf of the 
soldiers living, he impressed a kiss upon her venerable brow. 
This tribute was touching to those who had experienced none 
of the privations and hardships of the war, and to those who 
knew only as it had been told them what a heroic work our 
army nurses, led by Mother Bickerdyke, had done for the 
boys of our land, and to those who had had the experiences 
how much more deeply so. 

Mr. Hanback was followed by Col. Tom Jackson, of New- 
ton, who, like Hanback, had been in the hospital, but unlike 
him, was unable to partake of the toast and tea prepared by 
the kind hand of the nurse. Colonel Jackson, however, in other 
ways learned to appreciate the services of these self-denying 
women and improved the opportunity to tell the people what 
had been done by them. 

At this juncture Comrade Botkin presented to Mother Bick- 
erdyke a silver water service in behalf of the fifteen thousand 
comrades of the G. A. R., seven thousand women of the W. 
R. C, and in behalf of all the loyal people of the state of 
Kansas. The gift, he said, was as imperishable as the hearts' 
affections. The pitcher represented the pitcher from which 
she poured the cooling drink for her sick and dying boys, and 
the glass represented the glass from which she gave the suf- 
ferers the draught that moistened their parched lips. 

Colonel Feeder, of Great Bend, Kan., commander of the 
Sons of Veterans, was next introduced to the audience. He 
expressed his inability to make a speech after all these older 
men had preceded him, though he promised that the order 
he represented would take up the work when all of the old 
veterans had answered to the final roll call. 

One of the most touching tributes delivered during the 
afternoon was that by Mrs. H. A. Allen, of Russell, who had 
but recently returned from Galesburg, 111., Mother Bicker- 
dyke's old home, and hence was well prepared to tell the 
people in what high esteem this grand woman was held by the 



106 MOTHEE BICKERDYKPJ AS I KNEW HER. 

people of her home town. In behalf of the Eussell W. C. R. 
Mrs. Allen presented to Mother Bickerdyke a gray gown and 
a pair of slippers, and in behalf of the people of Galesburg 
she delivered to her an evergreen wreath. No one but Mother 
Bickerdyke can fully appreciate the worth of this token of 
affection, for it was made from twigs gathered from her hus- 
band's grave. 

This ended the exercises of the day, but in the evening old 
soldiers and their friends again gathered in the tent to listen 
to the old but ever interesting war stories. Several of those 
present made short speeches. Thus ended the day at Bunker 
Hill, and all who were there were glad that Commander Botkin 
had issued an order for the celebration of this birthday. 

Several telegrams and many letters were received 
from old soldiers Mother Bickerdyke had nursed dur- 
ing the war. These were read and later were printed 
and bound into a neat volume and presented to the 
"Soldiers' Mother" as a lasting memento of love and 
gratitude. Besides the gifts presented publicly, many 
were given her privately — gifts that made her heart 
glad and gave her a newer, stronger sense of the great 
wealth of love the people held for her. 

Among the decorations of the town were two ban- 
ners stretched across Main street, one bearing the 
word "Welcome," and the other proclaiming "Honor 
to Mother Bickerdyke." 

Sickness prevented my attending this celebration, 
but I sent a "proxy" in the person of my eldest son, 
who had the honor and pleasure of being a favorite 
of Mrs. Bickerdyke's. He ate dinner with her at her 
home table and told me much of the pleasant doings 
of the day and how cheery and "jolly" she was ; how 
fully she enjoyed everything, and how deeply sensible 
she was of the honor done her — the love given her. 
Though she had four birthday anniversaries after this 
one, no other was so widely or so publicly honored, 
though friends were never lacking to remember he; 
with shifts and con.gfratulations. 

Believing this letter will be of general interest, I 
give it. It is dated at Melrose, Mass., July 15, 1897, 
and runs thus : 

My Dear Old Friend and Comrade: I see by the papers 
that the G. A. R. of Kansas will celebrate your birthday on 



THE EIGHTIETH BIKTHDAY. 107 

the 19th of July, Avhen you will be eighty years old. I wish 
I could be with you on that day to assist in the celebration, 
and if you lived in Chicago instead of Kansas I would start 
directly to participate in the great day. The noble men of 
the G. A. K. cannot honor you too highly, nor express too 
strongly their sense of the great work you did during the 
war. I see that your army record, which w^as a record of 
service to the sick and wounded soldiers in camp, hospital and 
on the battlefield, transcends that of all other ivomcn. What 
a mother you were to them! How you labored for them! and 
spent yourself for them and in their behalf! I am glad 
that they are grateful to you! I am proud that they remem- 
ber you ! I sometimes meet old soldiers here in the East 
who were in the hospitals where you cared for them, and their 
grateful regard is unbounded. They always ask me to remem- 
ber them to you with thankful love. 

Well, those days have gone, and you and I will never be 
called to render service in another w^ar, for we are near the 
end of the journey. Mrs. Eliza Porter and Mrs. Jane Hoge, 
of Chicago, Abby W. May and Abby Gannett, of Boston, all 
co-workers with both of us, and friends of ours, have passed 
away to the Better Land, whither we shall soon follow. I am 
thankful that I was privileged to work for the boys in blue, 
as I doubt not you are. It enriched us by giving us larger 
sympathies and precious memories. I am glad you are with 
your son, and I hope the other boy is still spared to you. Mr. 
Livermore and Etta and Lizzie send their love to you and their 
best wishes. Mr. Livermore will be eighty years old in ten 
months, and I am seventy-six. I enclose a picture of myself, 
taken when I was seventy-six — the very day. You see I have 
greatly changed. My children are well and live near me — 
Etta, with her six children, living opposite, and Lizzie un- 
married and still at home. She has always been an invalid. 
One of my grandsons was married June 2 on his twenty-third 
birthday. 

With much love I am your old friend, 

Mary A. Livermore. 

And then, womanlike, she adds a postscript to say : 

Mr. Livermore is perfectly well and is not yet gray. 

These Httle details of home life prove how true and 
deep the friendship was, how sincere the interest each 
felt for the other. And still we believe the friendship 
abides — the loving- interest continues now that they 
have reached the journey's end and met in the "Better 
Land" of their hopes and dreams, for 
''We know God does not mean 
To break the strands reaching between the Here and There." 

And while the soul lives its love lives, too. 



108 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

The mists of earth have rolled away and left them glad 
and happy co-workers again in that land 

''Where we find the joy of loving 

As we never loved before, — 
Loving on, unchilled, unhindered. 

Loving once, f orevermore. ' ' 

Another letter is from Helen Brainard Cole, a hos- 
pital nurse in Washington during the war. It tells 
its own story. Dated at Sheboygan Falls, Wiscon- 
sin, June II, 1897, it runs thus: 

My Dear Mrs. Bickerdyke, or as we used to call you in 
the war, ' ' Mother Bickerdyke ' ' : When I noticed in a recent 
copy of the Milwaukee Sentinel that July 19, on your eight- 
ieth natal day, there was to be a celebration for you. I ex- 
claimed, ''If I could leave my dear, sick, infirm father and 
mother I should go. ' ' How vividly I recall our first meeting 
Avith you in Louisville, Ky. Then your visit to me in Camp- 
bell Hospital, Washington, D. C, when you came to be present 
at the grand review, when we took the ambulance and went 
over the hills and plains about Washington, where the soldiers 
Avere camping, and when they saw you coming how they rushed 
with open arms, crying out, ' ' Mother Bickerdyke ! Mother 
Bickerdyke ! ' ' Oh, the pathos in the speaking that name told 
the story! It spoke volumes of devoted care, faithfulness that 
amounted to the divine. Some years after our Rebellion, in 
one of my visits to Washington, I attended the Spanish Embas- 
sador 's reception. I met there General Sherman, and as we 
stood talking of Mother Bickerdyke 's stupendous, unselfish 
labor for the soldiers, many clustered around to hear of 
your work, and an elegantly dressed lady from New York, 
Avho had accompanied General Sherman and his daughter to the 
reception, said, ' ' I would give millions of dollars for such 
a record as Mother Bickerdyke has. How glorious ! ' ' And the 
splendid General Sherman said, "Yes, glorious! She out- 
ranked me ! " And much more was said of your fearlessness, 
for you were pursuing the right! Good Colonel Kluick (whom 
you will remember as on General McPherson's staff and who 
was detailed to take the general's body home to Ohio) never 
tired of talking of you. He passed on many years ago. And 
how the ranks are thinning! When I saw you last you were 
passing through Syracuse, N. Y., en route west. I boarded 
the train to see you and you were surrounded with flowers — 
beautiful flowers — offerings of friends. Hoav much I would 
like to visit with you and talk over the days with such blessed 
memories as ours, caring for the sick and wounded. I cannot 
find words to express what a pleasure it would be to hear frorc 
you. Cannot you let me know, dear? You need no assurance 



THE EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY. 109 

of my faithful thought of you always. And the name Mother 
Bickerdyke stirs me to the very foundation, for it is identical 
with the bugle call — the dear old flag — '^ tramp! tramp! 
tramp ! ' ' — and ' ' Marching Through Georgia, ' ' and every 
tender cord in my heart is touched with the memory of the 
sweet patience, loyal devotion that was rendered the soldier 
boy by Mother Bickerdyke. How they adored you! And 
believed in you as they did in their God. My dear, cherished, 
valued friend, I leave you in infinite love, 

Helen Brainard Cole. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE LAST YEARS. 

''I can no longer walk swiftly, but I must walk all the 
more diligently. ' ' 

Though Mother Bickerdyke may not have had this 
thought consciously in mind in the four years that lay 
between the celebration of her eightieth birthday and 
the end of her earthly pilgrimage, her life expressed 
it. She seemed also to realize that for her time here 
was growing short and what she had to do she must do 
quickly. She kept steadily to her work of helping sol- 
diers to get pensions, of looking after the needs of 
their widows and orphans and, in so far as it was pos- 
sible to her, of making glad the barren places of life, 
but she lived and worked more and more quietly with 
longer and more frequent resting spells between her 
hours of labor. She went less and less from home, 
and accepted with gratitude the ever increasing care 
and watchfulness over her of her son and her faithful 
*'maid servant," Lydia. Lydia, who had, by her long 
devotion and service, won such a place in the little 
family that she was not regarded as a servant, but 
rather, as Mother Bickerdyke would say, '*as one of 
us," and whose care of her was more like that of a 
daughter for her mother than of one who worked 
for the weekly wage. 

Friends came and went to the quiet, cozy home. 
The light-hearted and happy came to share their joys 
— the poor and sorrowing came seeking aid and sym- 
pathy — and to each one she gave according to their 
need. As in other vears she dictated letters and 



112 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

planned and directed the making of garments for the 
needy, but her working hours grew shorter and more 
and more gladly when 

' ' Night had hushed the clamor and the stir ' ' 
in the village streets, and all grew quiet about her, she 
sat in her easy chair by the fireside in the winter even- 
ings, or upon the porch wreathed round with blossom- 
ing vines, at the close of the summer day, and held 
quiet converse with her son who knew no joy 
greater than that of making "mother" comfortable 
and happy. Often her thoughts reverted to . the 
time of her army life, and she talked of the 
scenes in the hospitals and upon the fields, or toiled 
again over the long marches. Her tones would grow 
tremulous and her eyes moist as she told some touch- 
ing story of a soldier's death and of the last messages 
given her for the dear ones at home — for the bravest 
are ever the tenderest and those who so willingly and 
gladly gave their lives for their country in her need, 
thought not of self, but of others in their last hours. 
After the sad story would come others less so — those 
that brought a ready laugh from both mother and son 
— the while the air was filled with the drowsy hum of 
insects, the chirping of crickets and the persistent call 
of the katy-did — all mingling pleasantly with the quiet 
voices and making memories never to be forgotten. 
But even of this the good mother would weary 
and soon the "good nights" would be said and she 
went to her rest while he lingered over some school 
problem or read the inspiring thoughts of some fa- 
vorite author. 

Thus the quiet days melted into months and the 
months stretched out to years and left them still to- 
gether, with the tie between them growing ever m.ore 
tender, more holy. 

Away back in 1887 the city of Ellsworth, located in 
the county adjoining Russell county, on the east and 
about twenty-five miles from Bunker Hill, bought a 
tract of land comprising one hundred and sixty acres 
and deeded the same to the G. A. R. of Kansas "as a 
perpetual holding and a permanent home for state re- 



I 



THE LAST YEAES. 113 

unions and aged soldiers and their families, their wid- 
ows and orphans, with the express condition that a re- 
union of ex-Union soldiers should be held upon this 
land at least once in every two years." This condi- 
tion, for some reason, was not properly complied with, 
and in 1897 the W. R. C. of the state was given the 
management of the place. With them began the prac- 
tice of caring only for the widows and orphans of ex- 
soldiers. An average of forty women and children 
were supported here for a period of five years, when 
the state took charge and designated the same as the 
"Mother Bickerdyke Soldiers' Home and Annex to 
the State Soldiers' Home." The friend who kindly 
gives me this information adds farther, ''There are fif- 
teen substantial brick cottages, two hospitals, a head- 
quarters building, etc. These were all erected by the 
state, though most of them since 1888. Both hospitals 
are well equipped, have competent nurses, and are 
steam heated. One hospital has old ladies as inmates, 
who are practically helpless, two of them being above 
ninety-eight years old. In this building there are six- 
teen old ladies, in the other seven. After the state took 
control of this place the needy mothers of ex-soldiers 
were also admitted there. The larger hospital has 
twenty rooms. The total number of women and chil- 
dren at this home at present (1906) is forty-five. There 
are fourteen children, and those of school age attend 
the school of Ellsworth. To these people everything is 
furnished by the state. They have literally no expense 
except in the case of those receiving pensions, who pay 
a small amount for washing. They have each a good 
home, with fuel, food and clothing. The whole is un- 
der the control of the same board of trustees that have 
charge at Fort Dodge. 

"When the state took charge it was designated as the 
Mother Bickerdyke Home. This as a tribute to her. She 
had no other connection with it and was in no wise responsible 
for its progress. A room was set apart, furnished and known 
as Mother Bickerdyke 's room, and was occupied by her on her 
occasional visits. ' ' 

To beautify the grounds around this Home many 
trees were set out. Manv of them are named for dif- 



ii4 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS 1 KNEW HER. 

ferent individuals whom the people would honor and 
whose memory they would commemorate. Among 
them are several of extra beauty named and dedicated 
to Mother Bickerdyke, which seems much more beauti- 
ful to me than the erecting of monuments of stone, the 
great, wide-spreading branches inviting the passerby 
to rest and repose fittingly symbolize her widespread 
charities with the beauty and graciousness of her love. 
To this home she loved to go, and after longer jour- 
neys grew too tiresome for her she still went here. 
Here, as elsewhere, love greeted her. The women and 
children gathered around her and told her of their 
daily lives, their interests and their desires. Some of 
them were the widows and children of soldiers whom 
she had nursed and with whom she had stayed until 
death had come to end the struggle and the pain. They 
never tired of talking with her, nor did any other, and 
the days of her visits were ''red letter days" in their 
calendar. I think, though I can not now be certain of 
it, that her last little trip from home was to this Home 
— that here she made her last visit. 

A few times in these last four years she attended 
state reunions of soldiers, but only once did she go 
farther, that was when, in October, 1898, she went back 
to Cincinnati, Ohio, to join in the thirteenth annual 
meeting of the *'Army of the Tennessee," where she 
delivered an address. She was elected a member of this 
society and was presented with an official badge, of 
which she was very proud, and which she prized so 
highly that it was pinned upon her breast as she lay in 
her last long sleep, and worn to the grave. Picture 
this woman standing in all the glory of her eighty-one 
well spent years, before this great crowd of ex-sol- 
diers, and speaking to them words and sentences glow- 
ing with hope and patriotism, words that would come 
back to them long after and would ever incite them to 
higher life and greater endeavor! Picture the scene 
as they came around her, eager to press her hand once 
more and to hear again her fervent "God bless you, 
my boys !" See them as they — these old gray-bearded 
men — but her boys still — as they put their arms around 



THE LAST YEARS. 115 

her and try once more to thank her for all she has 
done and been to them ; listen while in voices trembling 
with emotion and sometimes choked with tears — tears 
that do not shame their strong manhood, but tell rather 
of its depth and truth — they talk of the times when 
she helped them win the fight for life and made it pos- 
sible for them still to live and serve. Seeing, hearing 
all this, who could doubt the soldiers' love for her? 
Who could help but sympathize with her in her joy in 
it all? Yet it was a joy mingled with sadness, for she 
and they alike felt it would be the last time she could 
be among them thus, and when they kissed her good 
bye — as so many of them did, they knew it was the 
last time her lips of flesh would meet theirs. She said 
"Good bye, I shall not see you again here. I am get- 
ting old and must soon be mustered out, but we shall 
find one another somewhere, some time." With these 
and similar words of hope and faith they parted — the 
soldiers to go to their many scattered homes and take 
up their varied work with renewed courage and 
strength, because of this meeting with the old mother 
and the old comrades, and she to go up into Knox 
county to visit her old home and the relatives yet left 
there. Here, too, joy mingled with sadness as she 
went from place to place made dear to her by early 
association and noted the changes everywhere. But 
she knew progress must ever bring changes and with 
resolute will she put the sad thoughts from her and 
found pleasure in the newer scenes — the later growths. 
She missed the great forests where she had loved to 
search for the earliest spring blossoms, and where in 
autumn she had gathered nuts, mosses, ferns and long 
sprays of beautiful vines with leaves of purple, crimson 
and gold. She missed the old springs the great trees 
had sheltered, and the streams that once went singing 
on their way through wood and field, but she saw with 
pleasure the more comfortable homes of the people, 
the larger school houses and more numerous churches. 
In fancy she "wandered through her yesterday" with 
her husband by her side, building again those airy 
castles that were so little like the reality Time brought 



116 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

to her. But she knew all was well and still she faced 
life bravely, finding, as all must find who live worthily 
and give loving service to those around them — 

"Life's latest sands its sands of gold," 
and knowing there is good everywhere. 

Here, as everywhere she went, friends welcomed 
her gladly, lovingly, and urged her to stay longer 
with them. But though she was glad to see them again, 
and felt all the warmth of their love, she could not 
tarry long. She missed the broad sweep of the Kan- 
sas prairies, their manv voices called her to "Come 
back.'' 




Mother Bickerdyke's home at Bunker, Hill, Kansas, where 
she died. November 8, 1901 



CHAPTER XV. 



GOOD-BYE TO EARTH. 

' ' Say not good-night, — but in some brighter clime 
Bid me good-morning. ' ' 

After a visit of a few weeks among her relatives in 
Ohio Mother Bickerdyke came back to her son and 
her home in Bunker Hill and the quiet days went on 
as before. 

It was not until that last year, 1901, that we began 
to hear rumors of her failing strength that alarmed 
us. But she kept up so well, she worked so steadily, 
she showed such active interest in all that went on 
around her, that even then we could not think how 
soon she was to leave us. The last spring came and 



118 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

went with its promises as dear, its flowers as sweet as 
ever; but when the heat of the summer came on, her 
son, ever watchful for her comfort, noticed signs of 
increasing weakness, and remembering the good it 
once had done her, proposed another trip to California 
for her, but she said, "No, my son, I do not want to 
go," and he said no more about it. The days in their 
passing laid heavy toll upon her, but with great deter- 
mination she arose each morning and occupied herself 
with the little duties and pleasures the day brought. 
Ker friends still visited her, her ''boys" never missed 
a chance to see her, but the shadow of the parting 
was over all. Yet it was not a dreary shadow — her 
brave spirit forbade any dreariness. It was only the 
sunset of a well spent day, struck through and through 
with light, giving strong promise of a beautiful to- 
morrow. 

In July her son was obliged to go to Kansas City 
for medical treatment. She could not go with him, 
but some three or four weeks later she went down and 
returned with him. This I believe was the last time 
she went from home, though she went more or less 
into the homes of the village where there was want or 
sickness, doing always what she could to alleviate the 
want and cheer the sick. 

On the afternoon of November first she got up from 
her chair to cross the room. Mr. Bickerdyke asked if 
he should help her. ''Oh, no, my son, I do not need 
help," she replied, but the next instant, before he could 
reach her, she fell to the floor. She was considerably 
aflFected by the shock, and grew weaker rapidly until 
Sunday afternoon (Nov. 3), when she was stricken 
with paralysis of the left side, and it was thought the 
end was near. Word passed around that she was 
dying. But she clung to life and days of anxiety fol- 
lowed. Her mind as yet was clear and strong. Though 
she spoke little the few words to her son were full of 
love and motherly anxiety, but her faith never fal- 
tered, her courage was undaunted. Thursday after- 
noon her mind seemed failing, and at two o'clock Fri- 
day morning, November 8, 1901, she lost conscious- 



GOOD-BYE TO EARTH. 119 

ness entirely and lay quietly breathing until the day 
was nearly done, when she quietly and easily passed 
from earth, "falling on sleep" at sunset to awaken with 
the sunrise still safe and well in the Father's care, 
while we who loved her thanked Him for the long 
years He had left her with us and gave her a tender 
"Godspeed" to all that was to come. 

Funeral services were held for her at her home on 
the following Sunday and, though it was very largely 
attended, it was a lonely funeral, for of her own — 
those bound to her by ties of kinship — only one son 
and a cousin or two were there. But they knew how 
truly she was beloved by all, and must have been 
cheered by the tenderness and sympathy shown by 
everyone there. 

From the Russell Record, published a few days later, 
I take this extract: 

Her body lay in state at her home and was viewed by all 
who came. Her countenance had the same calm expression 
as in life, and her appearance was as if she was taking a 
quiet rest. The badge of the Army of the Tennessee, which 
she prized so highly, was pinned upon her breast. The casket 
was a beautiful one — beautifully trimmed. At the head was 
a beautiful floral anchor, made of bright flowers and ferns, 
presented by the G. A. E. and W. R. C. of Russell. A card 
was attached on which was written these words, "Say not 
goodbye, but in a happier clime bid me good morning." Om 
the center of the casket was a beautiful shield of white 
flowers, in which was worked the word ''Mother," presented 
by the W. R. C. of Bunker Hill. At the foot was an anchor 
sent from Wilson, Kan. 

The songs sung were very appropriate, consisting of "One 
Sweetly Solemn Thought," the words of which have brought 
comfort to so many who were homeward bound; "Jesus, 
Lover of My Soul," "Mother's Beautiful Hand," and "I 
Would Not Live Alway. ' ' Several addresses were given, one 
of them from the text, "Many daughters have done vir- 
tuously, but thou excellest them all." When all was over, the 
last look taken of the dear fac«, the last farewell said, her 
body was taken back to Galesburg, HI., her son and represen- 
tatives of different G. A. R. posts accompanying it. Arriving 
at their destination they were met by the local G. A. R. and 
W. R. C, who took charge of the burial. There another service 
was held, attended by a great crowd of her former friends, 
old neighbors and soldiers, and all was done that could be 
done to show how deep and sincere was the honor in which 
they held her, and how truly they loved her. There was much 



120 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

singing, the last song being ' ' Tenting On the Old Camp 
Ground," that she had heard so often at reunions and loved 
so much. Dr. George E. Stocking, pastor of the Universalist 
Church, of Galesburg, at that time, took the lesson of com- 
fort and inspiration from the fifteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians, and one of those who went from Kansas spoke 
tender words to her memory. I give this extract that you may 
know how he, in common with us all, loved her: 

' ' There is no love so pure, tender and strong as that of a 
mother. Christ commanded us to love our mothers, and if 
any person ever followed that law our Mother Bickerdyke was 
a living exemplification. In Kansas the soldier boys knew 
her by no other name than 'Mother,' and she in turn always 
spoke of us as her 'boys.' But that heart is now still. 
Mother, after eighty-four years of labor, thought of her old 
home in Illinois, and expressed a wish to have her final rest- 
ing place there by the side of her beloved husband (that hus- 
band whose love was so much to her that no other could ever 
taken his place and whose name she bore so proudly to the 
last). So we have brought her over six hundred miles of 
plains and hills to bury her in your beautiful city. I have 
known Mother Bickerdyke many years and loved her, as all 
of the boys have loved her. I have seen her at many reunions, 
and there has always been something pathetic about her. I 
remember that on the southern battlefields, when the noise 
of the cannons and the muskets stopped, mother was there, 
and despite the rain, mud and cold, she went everywhere to 
bring relief to the soldiers. There are soldiers in every state 
who owe their lives to her. There is no name in Kansas more 
respected, loved and venerated than that of Mother Bicker- 
dyke. 

"Comrades, time has put furrows in our cheeks and our eyes 
are dimmed. In the days of our youth we fought to per- 
petuate our country. You did your duty and did it well, and 
let me tell you something, though I do not know your lives, 
I am old-fashioned enough to believe in this book (placing his 
hand on the Bible), may He who guides the destinies of 
nations and men guide your steps to the land where you will 
meet Mother Bickerdyke. When we part tonight may we not 
say goodbye, but may we meet in some better clime. 

''Brother Bickerdyke will go to his home, but his hearth- 
side will be cold and mother's chair will be vacant, but may 
your prayers go up to heaven to help him. When the Memorial 
day comes round place a tribute on the grave of our Mother 
Bickerdyke, for him and for us." 

At the grave in Linwood cemetery the local W. R. C. had 
charge and its ritual was employed, the officers forming a 
circle about the casket. When the last word was said, the 
last song sung, with falling tears and hushed, pathetic voices 
the people passed by, and as they passed each one dropped a 
flower upon the casket, and then "ashes to ashes, dust to 



GOOD-BYE TO EAETH. 121 

dust/' slowly, silently they turned away and left all that 
was mortal of this dear old mother, asleep in the bosom of 
earth. 

She had outlived the great majority of her soldier 
boys — thousands have preceded her to the Beautiful 
Shore, thousands more will soon be there — and, oh, 
the blessedness of that reunion ! The joy of that 
mother to greet her boys again, one by one to take 
their hands in hers and call them by name — the loved, 
familiar name known on earth. And, oh, what will it 
be to them — these soldier boys — to meet her "Over 
there" and to find, amid all the blessedness and beauty 
of heavenly life, that she is still the same — the loved 
and loving Mother Bickerdyke forever! 

You must all have read of the beautiful monum.ent 
erected over her grave, a monument that symbolizes 
her life and work by the figure of a woman kneeling by 
a dying soldier, supporting his head in her arms, while 
she tries to stay the crimson tide of life that rushes 
from his wounds. It will stand there telling its silent 
story until Time wears it away. And there the patri- 
otic fathers and mothers of America will bring their 
little children as to a shrine. Standing there they will 
tell her heroic story and it shall give strong emphasis 
to all that they would teach of love and service, of self- 
denial and all that makes glad the common way of life. 
It is a story to which not only the little children, but 
those of larger growth as well shall love to listen — 
the story of this woman who was true to every trust 
given her because she was true to herself. She knew 
"They serve God best who serve His creatures." There 
the fairest flowers shall bloom and the sweetest bird- 
songs be suns^. There the great trees will ever stretch 
their branches heavenward and all will unite to tell 
of life and love and service and her who embodied it 
all — our Mother Bickerdyke. 



CHAPTER XVI. * 

HONOR TO MOTHER BICKERDYKE. 

* ' And love lives on and hath a power to bless 
When they who love are hidden in their graves." 

Mother Bickerdyke did much for Kansas and the 
Kansans deHghted to honor her. All over our beauti- 
ful prairies — prairies of which poets have sung and 
statesmen have rejoiced to mention — the broad, spread- 
ing lands that one has called "the open hand of God," 
yielding riches and blessings to whosoever earns them 
by honest toil and perseverance — these lands are dotted 
all over with the homes of the soldiers, many of them 
brought here through the effort of Mrs. Bickerdyke. 

Kansas has always ''faced the right" and stood un- 
flinchingly for freedom and truth. Her record is one 
to be proud of — her history such as no one can read 
without a thrill of civic pride and gladness — and this 
because our men and women are equal to their homes 
— because the individual life is strong and good. 

Thinking of this, remembering how much of our 
state population is made up of the old soldiers and 
their descendants, I wonder how much of it all we 
owe to the soldiers' mother, dauntless Mrs. Bicker- 
dyke? It is a debt not easily computed — a debt to be 
paid not in money nor in empty words of praise, but in 
daily living and in worthy deeds. This land 
"Where even the deep blue heavens look glad, 
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground, ' ' 

where a something in the very air we breathe calls us 
to nobleness ; where the breadth and freedom of the 
prairies becomes a vital part of us and will not let us 
live low and base ; where we must needs be true to the 
best that is within us if w^e would be worthy of our 
sires and our fair heritage — this land that has wrestled 
with disaster, fought and conquered hardships — the 
mention of which would be disheartening to a less 



124 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

brave people — this state once a scoff and by-word, but 
now one of the strongest, as she is one of the fairest 
of the great sisterhood of states, whose motto calls us 
ever upward /'To the stars," whatever difficulties may 
be in the way, this great, beautiful state of Kansas is, 
more than any other, Mother Bickerdyke's monu- 
ment and memorial built up by her boys with her name 
and the memory of all she did 'Svrit large" in its 
history, imperishably engraven in the hearts of 
its people. Here her story will be told to the chil- 
dren and their children's children for generations yet 
unborn. 

Her picture hangs in the Historical Department of 
our state capitol, in G. A. R. halls all over the state, 
in the "Mother Bickerdyke Home" at Ellsworth and 
elsewhere, and in many private homes, and children 
are taught to lisp her name with love and gratitude, 
because of the good she has done, and of the heroism 
and beauty of her life both in public and in the privacy 
of home. 

Now that we can do no more for her, save to live 
as would best please her, facing the right and doing 
the duty that lies nearest us — each one with loving 
faithfulness, now that we no longer see her and can 
serve her no more, we are glad to remember we did 
not fail in honor to her while she was with us. We 
are glad that we let her feel the depth of our love and 
appreciation, and in so far as we could, gave back 
measure for measure of the good she did us. As she 
grew older and more feeble our tender care for her 
increased, and she lacked for nothing that a grateful 
people could give her. We did not keep our praise and 
our flowers until she was gone and then strew them 
lavishly over her grave, but let her have the comfort 
of them while she lived. But she asked little for her- 
self. It was for others she pleaded always — and their 
needs were ever paramount to her own. So they had 
enough she "could get along." 

Of several who knew her well I have asked, "What 
do you think was the keynote in Mother Bickerdyke's 
character?" One answered at once, "Executive abil-' 



HONOE TO MOTHER BICKERDYKE. 125 

ity, and, like Grant, never knowing when she was 
beaten, never giving up until she had accomplished 
her purpose." Another said, "It was truth — the 
strength of truth," and yet another said, "Her all- 
embracing motherhood." "Love," "Hope," "Cour- 
age and self-reliance," said others, and one added, 
"Her strong common sense" that made her say so 
often, when urging the granting of some asked for 
favor, as she said to General Sherman, when plead- 
ing with him to have an order changed, "Have some 
sense about it now, General." She admired courage 
and ability wherever shown, but she had no over- 
powering awe of a man siniply because he was an of- 
ficer. As I once heard her say, "They're only men 
anyway, and the biggest of them is only about six feet 
high." Whatever was the keynote of her character, it 
was the blending of all these traits mentioned that 
made her what she was. 

She was a true democrat, with all the simpHcitv of 
a Jefiferson, all the strength and tenderness of a Lin- 
coln. For Lincoln she had great love and reverence. 
I have seen her eyes fill with tears as she spoke of his 
kindness to the soldiers and his grief over the great 
sacrifice of lives and the sorrow that spread over our 
fair land. 

Though she associated with the highest and best of 
our land, moving among them easily because she did 
not think of herself, the poorest and the most unedu- 
cated felt no embarrassment in her presence. vShe 
met all upon the level of common manhood and woman- 
hood, the level of truth. Hers was the true aristoc- 
racy — the aristocracy of intellect and of soul. Her 
speech was such as "the common people heard with 
gladness," her message was one of love and good will 
to all — her work told for the improvement of the 
whole life — the mental and spiritual as surely as the 
physical, and no one, unless he was a rascal and did 
not want to live well, could come from a meeting with 
her without feeling better and stronger for it. Even 
for the rascal she had a great pity, knowing there is 
moral sickness and weakness as well as physical, and 



126 MOTHER BICKEEBYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

that the bad man is one of diseased moral nature and 
weak will, and is bad not because he loves evil doing, 
but because he lacks the strength to be good. 

After her removal from Russell in the early fall of 
1895, I did not see her again, as I was too much of an 
invalid to go from home, but she did not forget me, 
and every now and then I was cheered by a letter 
from her, characteristic letters they were, every one — 
revealing the mind and the heart of the mother — full 
of sympathy for my suffering, but with little or no 
mention of her own growing burden of pain and weak- 
ness. Once she wrote she had a picture for me, say- 
ing, "li your husband or son should be in Bunker 
Hill tell him to come in and get it, for I cannot send 
it by mail." I thought only of a small photo, probably 
a framed one, the glass over it preventing her send- 
ing it "by mail." Judge then of my surprise when 
upon receiving it I found it to be a large crayon por- 
trait, heavily framed ready for hanging, copied from a 
beautiful photo of her taken when she was about sev- 
enty-five. "You cannot go from home," she wrote in 
reference to this gift, "and have to look always at the 
four walls of your room. If seeing the reflection of 
my old face can do you any good you shall have it to 
look at." So it is that the dear old face looks down 
at me always, at once an inspiration and a benedic- 
tion, helping me to remember always the spirit in 
which she worked, and inciting me to greater patience 
and perseverance. It is a beautiful face to me. 

''Beautiful, though not with youth, 
But with the sweet, low lines of soul, 
The love that never dies. ' ' 

Beautiful with all the record of her well spent life, 
with the ripeness, the maturity of age, the eyes brood- 
ing and tender with mother love, the mouth firm but 
sweet, the whole expression that of one who looked 
deep into life and believed in the good everywhere — 
in short, a face that, as Helen Hunt has said, is the 
"outside garment" of a strong, true soul, the face of 
our dear old Mother Bickerdyke ! I wish I could tell 
what this pictured face has been to me all these years 



HONOR TO MOTHER BICKERDYKE. 127 

of "shut-in" life; of how often, looking at it, I have 
held back the impatient word that trembled upon my 
lips; of how many times, remembering her courage, 
I have said, *'I will" instead of "I cannot" when some 
hard task invited me to effort, or of how blest a thing 
it seems to me that the little son and daughter in our 
home should grow up in its — shadow — I was going to 
write, but let me change it to radiance, and with a sa- 
cred memory of her in their young hearts. They must 
be better through all after years because of it. I am 
glad to remember a similar picture must be in many a 
Kansas home, doing its good work in each one. 

I have read somewhere a pretty little story of a lit- 
tle boy lost from his parents in the streets of some 
great city, but who said to his mother later, when 
found, "I wasn't lost at all, 'cause I was right there in 
front of a toy-shop window all the time and I knew 
where Mother Bickerdyke lived." I think this must 
be the feeling of many of her soldier boys. They must 
think of the "Beyond" as the place where "Mother 
Bickerdyke lives," and that will make it seem less 
strange, less far away, for they will think of her 

"As waiting on the shore, 
More beautiful, more precious than before," 

and will go gladly on to receive her w^elcoming greet- 
ing. 



I 



m 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

'Ture religion, and undefiled, before God and the 
Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in 
their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
world." This was Mother Bickerdyke's working creed, 
it and the "golden rule" held all the doctrine she 
thought necessary in the living of a true religious life. 
Hers was essentially a religion of works rather than 
of words. She kept so busy in trying to follow Christ's 
example of living in loving fellowship with all around 
her, and doing good as she had opportunity, that she 
had no time, and certainly no disposition, for "doubt- 
ful disputations" over creeds and dogmas. In all my 
visits with her I remember but one talk that could 
be called distinctly religious, yet she always impressed 
me as being, what indeed she was, a deeply religious 
woman, one that rested all her hope and love, all her 
life on a power beyond herself. She no more doubted 
the infinite wisdom and goodness of this Power than 
she doubted her own existence. The love and help of 
the Father-God was as real to her as was her love for 
her children. It was this perfect faith that helped her 
over all the hard places and made her invincible. Did 
a task seem too great for her, 'T must do it — Father 
help me," she said, and the help was given. "It is a 
lack of faith that makes us weak. If we had faith 
enough we could do anything," she told me when we 
were speaking of some work that, though seeming 
very difficult, had vet been done easily and success- 
fully. 

She was not creed-bound in any way. She cut the 
lines of creeds and doctrines that would hold her back 



130 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

from communion with all that was highest and holiest, 
or limit her free thought and growth, as ruthlessly, as 
fearlessly as in her army life she cut the ''red tape" 
that would hinder her from giving instant relief to 
the sick and wounded. She liked a minister who dared 
have ''the courage of his convictions," and wo^jld 
speak the truth as it was in him. In speaking to me 
of a new minister who had just settled in town, she 
said, "You would like him. He is by far the most 
liberal minded minister we have had here, and is not 
afraid to know and to preach the truth." I never knew 
to what church she belonged, nor cared to know, since 
all her life showed she belonged to the great working 
Church of Christ. She felt little patience with those 
who would 

— ''fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God," 

though she might pity their ignorance in doing so. 
"They don't know any better now, but they will some 
day, somewhere," she would say when speaking of 
those who made a knowledge of and belief in some 
specified doctrine the measure of a religious life and 
the pledge of salvation. Hers was a family wherein 
the making of ministers must have been a "goodly 
work," for, when I was talking with her about writing 
a sketch of her life, she said, "Don't forget to tell them 
we had fifteen ministers in our immediate family, and," 
she added with a touch of pardonable pride, "four of 
them were bishops." 

That she knew how surely sorrow, if rightfully 
borne, brings fitness for life and work, was shown in 
what she said to me one day when I had expressed 
surprise at the work she had done during her army 
life. I spoke of it as being a consecrated work. "Yes," 
she said, "I was consecrated by sorrow. In the few 
years just before the war God had taken seventeen of 
those I loved best from me — among them my hus- 
band. (There was always a sound of tears in her 
voice when she spoke of her husband.) By my sor- 
row I was taught sympathy for others' sorrows, by my 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 131 

suffering I learned how to lessen the sufferings of 
others. Yes," she said again while a look as of one 
who summons 

"From tlie shadows of the past 

The forms that once had been," 
came in her eyes, ''y^s, I was consecrated by sorrow. 
God taught me how to work and gave me the work 
to do." Later, in that same conversation, she said, 
"No one ever does good work without being conse- 
crated to it. This consecration comes through the 
trials and sorrows of life — Life, all that comes to us 
here is a discipline — a praparation for the work God 
would have us do." She believed 

' ' The world we live in 
Comes before that which is to be hereafter," 

and that the faithful performance of duty here, the 
loving service one to another, was the only prepara- 
tion for the life beyond, and underneath all the work 
and bustle of her life lay a great peace, a beautiful 
serenity, a steadfast faith in the triumph of the right, 
however long delayed. 

Some one has written "God could not be everywhere, 
so he made mothers." Mrs. Bickerdyke was surely 
one of these God-made mothers. This dear title — 
Mother — more dear, more sacred than royalty ever 
wore, was hers by every right of nature and of love, 
and she wore it with regal grace. It followed her 
everywhere, even as did the affection that prompted 
the giving of it. Tenderly as his own mother might 
have done, she listened to the last, low-spoken words 
of the dying soldier, soothingly she sang his "Swan 
Song," as death came nearer and nearer, and his soul, 
upborne by her singing, by the thoughts of love and 
home and Heaven, of which she sang — floated bravely 
out into the silence — God's silence. Tenderly then she 
gathered up the little keepsakes he had cherished and 
wrote the letter to send with them to those who waited 
at home, longing — God knows how wearily — for the 
sound of the footsteps they were never to hear again. 
Think how many times she did this through those 
dreadful years. What but mother love could have 



132 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

prompted it? What but God's love could have 
sustained and strengthened her for it all ? How easily 
and naturally it leads us to believe in the ''Father and 
mother heart of God," as Theodore Parker used to 
express it. It is easy to believe this human love, 
though so pure and sweet, was sent by a divine Love 
— more tender, more complete. Knowing, as she did, 
of this divine Love, resting in it so fully, drawing her 
strength from it daily, hourly, living so close to the 
dividing line — if there be a dividing line — that when 
once she faltered and said, 'T cannot," at a service 
asked of her, she heard "As plainly as I ever heard it 
in my life, my husband's voice saying, 'Yes, you can, 
Mary Ann," as she has told us ; scarce knowing 
"where earth ends and Heaven begins," believing with 
all her heart and mind in a God of love, how terrible, 
how false to her must have seemed the words she was 
compelled to see daily as she passed in and out of the 
doors of the "Old Mission Dolores," where she lived 
during her long stay in San Francisco. There, in- 
scribed upon "the arch encircling the altar," as Mrs. 
Davis tells us in her little story of "Mother Bicker- 
dyke and the Soldier," so deeply engraven that two 
hundred years of sunshine and of storm have not suf- 
ficed to erase them, are these words, "How terrible is 
this place ! This is none other but the house of God 
and the gate of Heaven." What a constant lie they 
must have seemed to her, and how she must have 
"ached," as she would say, to reach up and wipe them 
out. "How terrible is this place !" — the place where 
those devout Franciscan monks gathered the "wild 
children of the woods" and sought to teach them of 
the one true God who should supersede their Great 
Spirit, presiding over the "Happy Hunting Ground" 
of their childish faith. Truly the holy fathers must 
have believed in the gospel of fear and have felt that 
by it they could scare more of these people into a de- 
sire for more knowledge and a better way of life than 
they could win by voicing the great love story of cre- 
ation — that story that all of Nature, with her beautiful 
flowers, her forests and streams, her mountains, lift- 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 133 

ing glad hands to the heavens above, her valleys, over 
which the peace of God broods perpetually — yea, 
even with her fearful storms and mighty tempests, was 
ever trying to tell. The good mother heart, so full of 
love, must have given a constant contradiction to those 
words, and she must have felt it would almost have 
been better to let the Indians worship in the forests 
that were the ''first Temples," rather than teach 
them that any place that was indeed a "house of God" 
could be a ''fearful place." Her life here — filled with 
the quiet routine of work and service, gave a blessed 
denial to the graven words and preached ever the 
gospel of love. George Eliot tells us "There are some 
natures in which we are conscious of having a sort of 
baptism and consecration ; they bind us over to recti- 
tude and purity by their fast belief about us, and our 
sins become the worst kind of sacrilege, which tears 
down the invisible altars of trust." This was Mother 
Bickerdyke's nature. She held one to the right and 
made it seem impossible to shirk a known duty. 

She has gone from us now but her spirit is still 
with us, still holding us to the "mountain road" of 
life and endeavor. In her going, though there was 
everything to miss, there was nothing to mourn for, 
for she had long outlived the allotted "three score and 
ten" and was ripe for eternity. Though her son was 
left lonely and bereft it was only for a little time. The 
tie between them was too strong to be broken and 
she drew him to her by all the power of love and 
memory, and we think of them now as sharing again 
the same home, united and happv, and still serving 
faithfully. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

OLD LETTERS. 

^ ' Kind messages, that pass from land to land, 
Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history. 
In which we feel the pressure of a hand. ' ' 

How often we exclaim with "Ik Marvel," ''Blessed 
be letters!" those dear messengers that, coming warm 
and throbbing from the hearts of friends, find glad 
response in our hearts, and so help us to be cheerful 
travelers upon the way of life. 

Mother Bickerdyke had this help in fullest measure. 
I have spent several memorable days in looking over 
great files of letters written to her by her soldier boys 
— by their wives and mothers, and the great multitude 
of people to whom she had endeared herself through 
her services and her care. What letters they are! 
How they thrill and glow with love and gratitude! 
What glimpses they give of home and life there — 
what heart histories they reveal ! I knew the old sol- 
diers loved her dearly, but I could not dream how 
dearly, nor imagine such wealth of tender reverence, 
such depths of gratitude as these old letters, written 
long years after the close of the war, reveal. The 
soldiers have become farmers, doctors, lawyers, mer- 
chants, ministers, authors and teachers. They fill all 
the peaceful places of life, and are engaged in all its 
pleasant pursuits. They are wise and dignified and 
famous. Many of them have climbed high up on the 
ladder of life and are known "among the elders," re- 
nowned and eminent, and yet here they are boys 
again, gathering gladly about the dear mother's knee ; 
here they one and all sign themselves "your loving 
soldier boy," and beg her not to forget them. They 
tell again to her some laughable incident of army life ; 



136 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

they seek to recall themselves each one individually to 
her mind by writing of some special kindness or favor 
on her part; of things droll and things pathetic that 
they hope may have staid in her mind as they have 
in theirs through the changeful years since they were 
mustered out. One asks her, "Don't you remember 
coming into the ward one day and finding a forlorn- 
looking new patient there? You asked me (for I was 
the one) was there anything in particular I craved? 
And I said, 'Yes, I want an onion/ You got it for 
me. I shall never forget how good it tasted or cease 
to be grateful to you for it." The giving of an onion 
may be less romantic than the giving of roses, but if 
it was what the sick fancy craved, it was better than 
roses then. One, a college professor, tells her of how 
he tried to teach lessons of patriotism by telling his 
students of the work she did and how eagerly they 
listened to him. He sends her his photo, asking her 
to put it among the photos of her many boys and 
"think of it as being sent by one who loves you next 
to his own mother. Bless your dear mother-heart," he 
adds, "how I wish I could look upon your blessed face 
once more." Many others, like this man, send her 
photos and beg for pictures of her, or they tell her 
of how one already hangs in the hall of the "G. A. R. 
Post" and how they all love it. They tell her of their 
marriages, their home life, their wives and children, 
and often the wives write, too, to thank her for their 
home and happiness, for "John," "Harry," "Will" (or 
whatever the name of the husband may be), "tells me 
you saved his life," and "but for you," as one writes, 
"I should be a lonely old maid today instead of being 
the happy wife and mother I now am." One of the 
"old boys" writes: "My little boys ask me why I 
have two mothers and want to knov/ if 'Mother Bick- 
erdyke' is their grandma? If she is, why doesn't she 
come to see us?" He also says: "There are quite a 
number of your boys here, and when I told them I 
was going to write to you they all said 'Give mother 
our love and best wishes, and God bless her.' " An- 
other writes: "I always thought you did more good 



OLD LETTEES. 137 

than any other woman in the army, and you have a 
host of warm friends among the soldier boys." This 
man is "a direct descendant of John Rogers, the 
martyr burned at the stake," and of Mrs. Hannah 
Dusten, ''who killed so many Indians in the troublous 
times in Massachusetts' early history," and truly the 
martial spirit must have staid in the family, for he 
tells her ''when the war broke out there were six 
brothers ; five of us enlisted in the United States army 
and the other enlisted in the Kansas state service and 
helped to repel Quantrell." What a rich offering this 
father and mother laid upon the altar of their country 
— six noble sons ! It would be interesting to know how 
many of them lived to return to them, but of this he 
does not tell us. One says, "I often think, dear 
mother, that there must be a glorious crown awaiting 
you in the next world ; certainly if the prayers of the 
soldiers you have nursed, and the widows and orphans 
you have helped, can avail, I am sure there is." 

They call her the "soldier's best friend," "the best 
general in the field," "the grandest woman in Amer- 
ica," and even "a God-mother." They say "she has 
a heart as big as an army mule team," a "will that 
would not let one boy die that it was possible to 
save," and make such love to her as is seldom made 
to a woman ; give her such praise as is seldom given 
to mortal being. .She is "our mother," "our noble, 
precious mother," to them all, and a great rain of 
blessings follow her, while a great longing to see 
her, "to look upon that beautiful, gracious face once 
more" fills many a brave heart. They speak of the 
meeting in "the beyond," of the "campfires" there, and 
what it wall be to have her with them, going in and 
out among them with words of greeting and of love, 
even as she did in the old days, and these dear hopes 
help them to bear the separation from her here. 

A W. R. C. woman writes to tell her how "at one 
G. A. R. meeting a comrade came to me and wanted 
to know when I had seen you. He said 'tell me all 
you can about dear old Mother Bickerdyke ; how she 
looks, how she seems, and if she appears very old. 



138 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 



She saved my life; she will not remember me 
name, but ask her if she remembers the poor little 
pale-faced boy-soldier she used to carry in her arms 
in the hospital at Memphis and called her "baby." I 
would go any distance to see her again — blessed old 
Mother Bickerdyke.' " 

One old soldier, who was a prisoner and suffered 
so fearfully during the war that twenty years after 
its close he was still "unable to do any hard work," as 
lie tells her, says : "I have attended several reunions 
and campfires lately. When the boys know I have 
seen you I am doubly welcome. Many times their 
lips tremble and the tears start when your name is 
mentioned. Dear old mother! the boys never forget 
the tender care and loving words of twenty years 
ago that come sweeping over our hearts in memory 
as we gather around the campfires of today." 

Another writes to tell her how one of the old gen- 
erals at a convention "tried to tell the boys about you 
and what you did for his men, but he broke down 
utterly at the memory of it all, as did many of those 
there, and there were more tears shed than words 
spoken, for we love you now, Mother Bickerdye, just 
as we loved you in the old days, and the tears that 
bedewed our cheeks were no reproach to our man- 
hood." 

Here among the letters I find several from Rev. 
Jenkin Lloyd Jones. His, like the others, are full of 
love and gratitude, and he, too, signs himself "Your 
loving soldier boy." 

A Wisconsin comrade tells of attending a camp- 
fire or reunion at which Mr. Jones told them of her 
care and "blessed abusiveness" of him and how it 
helped to save his life. And how the great audience 
cheered. One, who signs himself, "Your Wild Irish 
Boy," tells how he dreamed that he and another com- 
rade "bought her a beautiful house surrounded 
by a great lawn that was filled with great 
trees and beautiful flowers, and "when we gave 
you the deed you were so happy." The dream goes 
on until they sat down to supper, the three together. 



1 

by I 



OLD LETTERS. 139 

"One of your old-time meals," he says, "with no frills 
or highfalutin' language," but just a "jolly good time 
all around, and I awoke calling for you — and you did 
not come." And so they wrote her — from all over 
the country — all so solicitous for her welfare, so anx- 
ious to know that she is well and happy and has no 
lack of comforts. Not one among them but would 
gladly share his home with her if need be and give 
from his poverty or his wealth, as the case might be, 
for her maintenance. Oh, it is beautiful and good, 
this outpouring of love, this inexpressible gratitude 
for the "soldier's mother!" How precious, how in- 
spiring these letters must have been to her, and what 
answers she must have written to them ; for, bearing 
eloquent witness to her love and the goodness of her 
heart, as well as to her careful ways, "Answered" is 
written across each one of these many, m.any letters. 
Beautiful, heart-satisfying letters — the ripe fruit of the 
seeds she sowed so many years ago. She "cast her 
bread upon the waters" and it returned to her in mani- 
fold measure of increase and blessing. She sent her 
great soul in love out over the mighty deep of human 
life and these are the olive branches returned for her 
cheer and comfort. She, "passing through the valley 
of Baca, made of it a well," whose waters refreshed 
not alone her own heart, but the hearts of all around 
her. No greater truth was ever uttered than that, 
"As ye sow so shall ye also reap." She sowed good 
deeds and they bore their legitimate fruit of love. 
How it should teach us to live ever by the simple but 
grand rule of doing as we would be done by. We 
speak of life as being complex and mysterious, and 
so it is in many of its phases, but at the heart of it all 
is simplicity — the simplicity of truth. The little child, 
looking into your face in confidence and expecting 
nothing but good, is your true philosopher. To it life 
means only being good and being loved. This child- 
like philosophy lay always in Mother Bickerdyke's 
heart and was expressed in her daily life. Her love 
was expressed naturally and easily in actions rather 
than in words. I never heard her say, "I love you," 



140 MOTHEE BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

to anyone, but I saw it said often in what she did. 
She won a large place in the hearts and lives of others, 
but she did it unconsciously and while in the perform- 
ance of her daily duty — ^for love's sake. 

I have spoken of Mother Bickerdyke's love of pets 
that, beginning away back in her babyhood days, 
stayed with her to the end of her life here, as is proved 
by a letter I have just received from a lady who lived 
very near her all the last years of her life and knew 
her intimately. She says : 

Mother Bickerdyke owned two pet geese and a large black 
cat that received considerable of her attention. She named 
the cat ' ' General Logan. ' ' It was an exceedingly smart 
cat, and not seeing her, would wander through the rooms of 
the house in search of her. She spent much time talking to 
it and nursing it. General Logan sat by her side in a chair 
at the table during meal times and accompanied her in her 
walks. When she died this cat mourned her loss and seemed 
restless and as if it could not understand what had become 
of its mistress. 

Her pet geese were given to her by a friend. They fol- 
lowed her in and out of the kitchen, ate from her hand 
and would frequently fight the cat when around Mother 
Bickerdyke as if they were jealous of the attention it re- 
ceived from her. These geese were three years old at the 
time of her death. Her son, Prof. Bickerdyke, kept and 
cared for them after she was gone, and when, three years 
later, he, too, died, they were sent to the one remaining son, 
Hiram Bickerdyke, in Montana, who says they shall be the 
pride of his ranch and shall be privileged to live on his irri- 
gating dams and do as they please. 

These things are not much of themselves, but as an 
index to her character, showing how great was the 
depth of her love and tenderness towards all created 
things, they are important and worthy of record. 

Another pleasant incident I would tell you, though 
it has no connection with the above : Among the many 
of Mother Bickerdyke's letters that were sent me I 
found this little note, written in the feeble, trembling 
hand of age. It was found pinned to a package of 
sheets and pillow cases sent to the Mother Bickerdyke 
Home : 'These articles were made by an old lady 
seventy-nine years old. She has been reading Mother 
Bickerdyke's book and is a great admirer of the dear 



OLD LETTERS. 141 

old lady, and is much interested in her work. She re- 
quests that these sheets and pillow cases he^ used for 
Mother Bickerdyke, especially, in the Home." 

No name was signed to this note and, so far as I 
know, it was never known who the old lady was who 
thus practically demonstrated her love for the ''Sol- 
diers' Mother." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

LETTERS FROM THE FRONT. 

From Mother Bickerdyke to Her Sons. 
''And the truth of truth is love." 
Through the kindness of Mr. Hiram B. Bickerdyke 
I am permitted to copy here three of his mother's let- 
ters written to him and his brother, Prof. James R. 
Bickerdyke, from the front. As is the case in all her 
letters, the tender solicitude of the mother breathes 
in every line. The one is written ''On board of boat, 
ten miles north of Fort Pillow." It is dated ''J^'^- ^S? 
1863," and is as follows : 

My Dear Boy Jimmie: Enclosed you will find five dollars 
to pay your tuition with. I want you to write me how you 
like your boarding place, who your teacher is, and if you 
attend Sabbath-school. I want you to be a good boy and 
grow up a Christian, and do all the good you can in the 
world. Eemember that God has placed us in this world to be 
good and to do good. Oh, then try to live for God and for 
those around you. Eesolve that you will be a man — a true 
man — a noble, God-like man. Set your mark high. You do 
not realize the good opportunities you now enjoy. What a 
contrast between today and last Sabbath! You know how 
we spent last Sabbath. (Evidently she was with him then.) 
Well, today we had a sermon on board of our boat by the 
Rev. B. F. Rogers, chaplain of the 15th regiment, Illinois 
Volunteers. I liked the sermon much. It was about the cer- 
tain punishment of those who sin. While the preacher was 
talking most of the soldiers gathered around to hear. Some 
stoop up, others sat on boxes, beds and on the floor; some 
were sick, others dirty, but they all listened with deep interest. 
While these exercises were going on several soldiers were load- 
ing their guns at the other end of the cabin, preparing to 
go out on picket duty while the boat lay up to the shore to 
take on fuel. It seemed so strange to see the people gath- 
ered round the preacher in one end of the boat while men 
were loading their weapons to shoot men with in the other 
end. But we see many strange and sad things connected 
with this war. This evening several on the boat, including 
some of the officers, have been singing negro melodies. Oh, 
how much better off you are than we! I hope you will try 



144 MOTHEE BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

to appreciate your privileges and will improve your time. 
When you write to me direct your letter to me in the Field 
Corps in Grant's Army. I shall be below Memphis, but 
where I cannot say. 

Remember what your mother has said to you. I think 
of you every day and pray to God to take good care of you 
during my absence. It is hard to be away from you, but if 
you are a good boy I can put up with it. Your affectionate 
mother, M. A. Bickerdyke. 

The second letter is written at Chattanooga, Tenn., 
January 3, 1864, nearly one year later, and now her 
two boys are together. The letter is addressed to 
James and Hiram Bickerdyke at "Forest Home," Chi- 
cago. It runs : 

My Dear Children : No day, hardly an hour, that your 
mother does not think of you, although it is so long since I 
have written. But if you could see the poor sick and wounded 
soldiers that need my care you would not wonder that I do 
not write oftener. I am now in a field hospital in Chatta- 
nooga, Lookout Mountain standing just in front of our 
camp. There are between four and five hundred men after 
whom I look every day. Two days ago it rained powerfully 
and in the night the weather changed, and wind blew down 
some of the tents and the sick men were very much exposed. 
It froze hard and was as cold as it is at Chicago, and the 
poor men, wounded and sick, far away from home to defend 
you, my children, and all the North from bitter foes. I hope 
you will ever remember that we are indebted to our noble 
soldiers for quiet at the North. Many are now lying low 
with most painful wounds, who will languish and then die 
far away from home, mother and sister, and suffering for 
want of attention. I have been to Cincinnati since I saw 
you. I found them all well. I hope, my dear children, you 
will so live that this may be to you a happy new year. Im- 
prove your time, be obedient and love and be kind to each 
other and all around you. I am grateful to God for pro- 
viding for you while I am able to do for our poor soldiers. 
Let me hear from you that you are good boys and then I 
shall be happy even here. My sons, I want you to love and 
obey your Saviour. Pray for yourselves and your mother. 
May God keep you ever. Your loving mother, 

M. Bickerdyke. 

On one page of this letter she writes to the lady 
who was caring for her children thus : 

My Dear Mrs. Nichols: I hope you have received the forty 
dollars I sent you several weeks since. Will you not write 
soon, and have the children write to their mother? I hope 
they are good boys and do not give you unnecessary trouble. 



LETTERS FROM THE FRONT. 145 

God will bless you in your good work of training these dear 
children under your care. I have many anxious thoughts 
and my prayers daily ascend for them and yourself. May 
God direct and bless you. Mary Bickerdyke. 

The third letter is from Nashville, Tenn., March 21, 
1864: 

My Dear Children, James and Hiram : I reached Hunts- 
ville in safety one week ago last Saturday, and left there 
again on Monday in company with Mrs. Porter to return here 
to hasten forward the vegetables that are so much needed 
by our poor sick and well soldiers. All need them much in 
the army now, and I hope to take many to them, sent from 
Chicago, Galesburg and many other places where they are 
doing so much for the soldiers. I hope this year all the 
boys and girls who can have a bed in the garden will sow 
onions and keep them from weeds, and plant potatoes. If 
every Sabbath-school boy and girl would determine to raise 
or earn one bushel or one barrel of vegetables I think every 
soldier would have a few. 

The day we came here General Grant left for Washington 
and General Sherman took his place. There is great prepara- 
tion being made for the spring campaign, — new wagons and 
horses and mules to take the place of wornout ones and 
many new recruits to take the places of the dear soldiers 
who have died in hospitals and on the battlefield. Poor sol- 
diers, who have left dear wives widows and their little chil- 
dren fatherless. I hope the boys and girls in Chicago and 
all through our land will love and try to care for the poor 
soldiers' families, whose fathers have died. Children who 
are at school as you are, and especially those who are at 
home with their dear fathers and mothers, must not forget 
that if the soldiers had not fought and died for them they, 
too, might have been without their kind fathers and mothers 
and their pleasant homes. I thought when I was in Chicago 
that the people who were living in comfort there knew but 
little what it cost others to secure to them so much peace 
in this time of war. And I thought, too, that mothers who 
could stay at home and work for the soldiers ought to be very 
thankful and do much to sustain and comfort those who are 
willing to leave all to care for those in camps and hospitals. 

My visit to you was so pleasant, and, knowing how kindly 
you are cared for, I can return to my work here and thank 
God that my fatherless boys are so kindly provided for by 
those who love the soldiers and the dear Saviour, to whom 
I wish to commend you. Love Him, obey your teacher, and 
God will bless and keep you darlings. Mother. 

P. S. — Give much love to Mr. and Mrs. Nichols, and ask 
them to pray for your mother. Mary Bickerdyke. 



146 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 



How truly every mother will sympathize with this 
mother in her yearning love for her "fatherless boys," 
left to the care of others while she went out to the 
larger duty of caring for thousands of boys whose 
mothers could not be with them. How solicitous she 
is for their spiritual well-being, how anxious that 
they should "aim high" and become wise and helpful 
men, citizens of true patriotism and usefulness. What 
a joy it was to her in after years to know her hopes 
and ambitions for them were all fulfilled, and they 
had become just the kind of men she wanted them to 
be. 

Not only do these letters reveal her love and hopes 
for her sons and the yearning in her heart for them, 
but they tell us much of the kind of woman she was 
and of her great unselfishness, for while she writes 
much of the sufferings and hardships of others not 
one word does she say of her own trials and hard- 
ships. She seems not to think of self, but only of 
those for whom she is caring, dear, noble Mother 
Bickerdyke ! 

Besides these letters from his mother Mr. Hiram 
Bickerdyke kindly sends me others written to her. I 
give them here that you may know further of the 
great esteem and love felt for her by those in high 
places. The first is from Mrs. Livermore, dated Mel- 
rose, Mass., September 5, 1897: 

My Dear Comrade and Friend: I have requested my pub- 
lisher to send you by express a copy of my last book, which 
is ''The Story of My Life." I presume you will receive it 
before this reaches you. When you have read it I want 
you to write me your opinion of it, and tell me how you have 
enjoyed it and the many pictures illustrating it. I will tell 
you why I want you to do this. My publisher is an old 
soldier, although not an old man, for he went into the service 
at eighteen and came out at twenty-one, doing valiantly, and 
yet coming out well and unwounded. He has the greatest 
admiration for you, and at his suggestion his post celebrated 
your eightieth birthday — away off here, more than one thou- 
sand miles from you, in Connecticut. He is going to publish 
a circular containing the opinions of many distinguished peo- 
ple concerning the book, such as Bishop Vincent, Lady Henry 
Somerset, Frances Willard, Robert CoUyer and others like 



n 



LETTERS FROM THE FRONT. 147 

them, and he wants to print your testimonial with theirs. I 
am sure you will not refuse him. I should also be very proud 
to have your name and your testimonial among theirs. 

I was very glad to get your letter and very glad you had 
so good a time on your eightieth birthday. I think more 
highly of the soldiers in Kansas for their kind remembrance 
of you. You stand at the head of all the women who went 
into relief work, and I have said and written that we have 
three pictures of you framed in our house. One is in my 
study, another in the sitting-room, and Lizzie has one in her 
room. Ella Norris, my married daughter, has a framed pic- 
ture of you in her library. Mr. Worthington, my publisher, 
has a picture of you in his oflfice. You see, you have other 
friends than those in Kansas. Last Sunday Colonel Wilcox, 
of Elgin, 111., called on me. He is in the east visiting his 
married daughter. He spoke of you very gratefully and said 
you saved the life of the major of his regiment, who was in 
the Gayoso Hospital and had pneumonia while he lay wounded 
and was very low. But for your excellent care, he said, he 
would have died. I presume there are many who can tell that 
story. Mr. Livermore and Lizzie, who are the only members 
of our family at home just now, send their love to you. Be 
sure to write me your opinion of my book. Yours in love, 

Mary A. Livermore. 

There is another letter from Mrs. Livermore to 
Mrs. Bickerdyke, dated July 3, 1899. It shows the 
same devoted love and unabated interest betv^een the 
two noble women, and in it Mrs. Livermore begs the 
dear old mother to take better care of herself and to 
live more quietly. She tells her: "I think you should 
not journey about as much as you do, as change of 
climate is bad for you at your time of life, and trav- 
eling isn't as easy as staying in your own home." 

A third letter is written to Mr. Bickerdyke in an- 
swer to one from him announcing his mother's dan- 
gerous illness. It is dated Melrose, Mass;, Novem- 
ber 8, 1901, the very day Mrs. Bickerdyke passed 
from earth life. It is as follows : 

Dear Mr. Bickerdyke: I am saddened by your letter. If 
your mother rallies from this attack it will loosen her hold on 
life, and she will probably never be as well again as before. 
But both she and I have reached an age when death must be 
expected. "We have exceeded the duration of life enjoyed by 
the majority. I hold myself in readiness to go at any time 
and I doubt not your mother has the same feeling. She has 
lived a grand, good life, packed with noble deeds wrought for 



148 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

others, and will be welcomed with the plaudit, '^Well done, 
good and faithful servant. ' ' I thank you for writing. Please 
keep me informed of your mother's condition, and if she is 
conscious, remember me in love to her. Whether she goes now 
or later, she and I will soon meet on the other side. I shall 
be eighty-one years old in a month, and although wonderfully 
well and strong for my age, I know I have but a hand's 
breadth of life before me, and am glad of the prospect of a 
not remote departure. Almost all my kindred and early friends 
have gone, and why should I wish to stay? Yours truly, 

Mary A. Livermore. 

But the letter that touches me deepest is the one 
from "Andy," who was Mrs. Bickerdyke's ''right- 
hand man," detailed by General Grant to accompany 
her through all her service — her ''faithful Andy," as 
she called him, and between whom and herself there 
was a bond of particular strength and tenderness. 
He belonged to the Seventh Iowa Infantry, but at 
the time of Mother Bickerdyke's death was living at 
Marceline, Mo., and wrote this letter from there to 
Mr. Bickerdyke on November 14, 1901, just after 
receiving news of her going: 

Dear friend, we received your kind letter with great 
regret. It was a sad blow to me — very sad. It is just as 
much loss to me as if she had been my own mother. I am 
very sorry to think she has passed away and I never got to 
see her. I have planned and hoped to come and see her at 
her home, but now that hope is dead. We were so much to- 
gether through dangerous times and hardships, and she was 
like a mother to me. I hold for her the same honor, love and 
respect that a son should hold for a noble and loving mother. 
But she has gone to her long home — a pathway we must all 
go sooner or later — and I know if ever anyone is at rest it 
is she. I have been expecting this every day, and dreading it, 
too, for I so longed to go to see her once more. I went to 
Kansas City and to Leavenworth, too, but she was unable 
to come, and I regret I did not go to Ellsworth, where she was 
then, but I didn't have the means. Accept my sympathy and 
kindest regards in your sorrow, and hope to meet again. We 
all feel it deeply. It may not be long till we all shall meet 
where there is no more sorrow. I am seventy-one years old 
past. Have you one of her photographs? I would so love 
to have one. Send me one of your home papers with her death 
and sickness that I may know all the particulars. I must 
close by saying. Look up and do not grieve, for she is happy. 
Yours truly, Andrev^ Sommerville. 



I 



LETTERS FROM THE FRONT. 149 

No one reading this can doubt but that it is the 
expression of an honest heart that loved much and 
was deeply grieved, though cheered by the sure hope 
of a future meeting, without which we should be 
bereft and poor indeed when our friends go from us 
"into the valley and the shadow of death." 

As showing how surely the soldiers thought Mother 
Bickerdyke could get for them anything they wanted, 
I copy these lines, written on a little leaf torn from 
a notebook, now yellow with age. Mother Bicker- 
dyke preserved it all these years, as she did many 
other mementoes of service rendered, as her son is 
doing now. It has no date : 

''My good woman," it begins, ''I have not eat any- 
thing for twenty-seven days but gruel, and I get tired 
of it. (Poor fellow, who would not get 'tired of it' 
in that time?) And I thought maybe I could get 
some potato soup. William Purtin, One Hundred 
and Three, Illinois Volunteers." 

If, perchance, this should reach the eye of the 
writer, or his family, what memories it will awaken, 
and not the least pleasant among them will be the 
memory of the "good woman" to whom he so confi- 
dently applied for "potato soup." Knowing her, we 
feel sure his pitiful appeal was granted. 



CHAPTER XX. 

OTHER LETTERS. 

And love steals slyly through the loud acclaim, 

To murmur a God bless you. 

— Lowell. 
I have spoken of how Kansas delights to honor 
this noble woman, of the homes named for her, the 
welcomes once given her at encampments and camp- 
fires, but inadvertently I have failed to tell of the 
"Mother Bickerdyke Home and Hospital" at Emporia, 
Kan. It was dedicated in 1895 and is supported by 
State funds. Not only the old soldiers, but also their 
widows and orphans, their mothers, if need be, are 
cared for here, and much is done to make it a pleasant, 
homelike place for those to whom we owe so much. 
Its management and equipment are similar to that of 
the Mother Bickerdyke Home at Ellsworth, Thus it 
is we keep her name and her memory fresh; thus we 
honor her; but more than all is the love we bear her, 
the image of her deeply enshrined in our hearts. 

Among the old soldiers who responded to my re- 
quest for stories of Mother Bickerdyke is one living 
in Manhattan, Kan,, who wrote me thus: 

If I remember right, it was in the campaign of 1880. 
General John A. Logan was the principal speaker at a Re- 
publican rally at Peoria, 111. During the time of his visit 
to the city, then my home, I, with others, attended an in- 
formal reception given him. Among other topics of interest 
that of pensions was introduced. The General spoke of the 
diflflculty in getting proper proof of the justice of one's claim 
before the Pension Department, and especially with the Medi- 
cal Board. ''The facts are," said the General, ''the boys 
that did the actual fighting had poor hospital records, while 
the hospital 'hummer' had the advantage. You .boys all know 



152 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

Mother Bickerdyke, God bless her! She had a case in point. 
I have forgotten the soldier's surname, but I know she called 
him ' Joe. ' There was difficulty in getting the right kind of 
proof in his case. The Examining Board found what was pre- 
sented unsatisfactory and 'Joe's' claim was rejected. But 
Mother Bickerdyke was not to be beaten in that awy. She 
knew she was right and she would not give up — not she. She 
brought * Joe ' to Washington and calling on me said, ' General, 
I want you to go to the Pension Department with me. I 
have a crippled soldier with me and I want to have him ex- 
amined by the Board of the Pension Department. ' I told 
her I was willing to do everything I could for her — as who 
would not who knew her? — but that I had some doubts about 
the Department granting her request for a personal examina- 
tion. ' Well, ' she said, ' that 's what we have come here for 
and we are not going back without it. ' Even yet I can see the 
flash of her eyes and hear the determined ring in her voice as 
she said this. I took her and ' Joe ' to the Commissioner of 
Pensions and stated her case to him. He looked doubtful and 
I thought her request would not be granted. I told him some- 
thing of Mother Bickerdyke 's service in the army and said 
she outranked me and every other General I had ever known 
or heard of. The Commissioner replied : ' In honor of Mother 
Bickerdyke, of whom I have heard so much, I will grant this 
request.' Up to this time she had said nothing, but now she 
thanked him in her hearty, sincere way and then, turning 
quickly to the old soldier, she said, 'Joe, are your legs clean?' 
From that moment her case was won. ' Joe ' was granted a 
liberal pension and they went home happy and gratified. The 
fact was, ' ' concluded the General, ' * ' Joe ' had no hospital 
record, but his 'legs' were 'clean,' and Mother Bickerdyke 's 
determination carried the day." 

Knowing the interest with which they would be 
read, I made a very earnest effort to get letters written 
by Mother Bickerdyke to her soldier boys in the years 
since the close of the war. But, whether because such 
letters were not preserved, or having been preserved, 
are too precious and too personal for public use, or 
from other reasons, the effort did not meet with the 
success I hoped for. The good Senior Editor, always 
ready to do anything to prove his gratitude and love 
for one who did so much for him, sent me a very 
characteristic letter written to him from San Fran- 
cisco under date of August 30, 1885. I copy it entire: 

Dear Mr. Jones : Your last was duly received, and it 
always gives me great pleasure to hear from you. I am very 
thankful for jour cool and collected thoughts in answer to 



OTHEE LETTEES. 153 

my scolding letter, for I was sorely tried that they would 
attempt to manage me in that way, as if I were not capable of 
taking care of myself. It was not so much for the amount of 
money voted me as it was the manner in which they treated 
me. I felt very grateful to the soldiers for the present and 
am sorry it was turned into an insult, — to them as well as to 
myself. It was wholly through the egotism of some of our 
Pacific coast delegates that this affair was so meanly managed. 

They thought it would sound very fine to have circulated 
around that they had charge of Mother Bickerdyke, and they 
had their plans laid that four or five dollars was all they would 
give me at once, as ''the old lady had not judgment enough 
to know how to spend it to the best advantage ' ' — these are 
their very words. If I am obliged to have a guardian, let it 
be a veteran, for then there would be some sympathy between 
us; but this Commander Warfield enlisted late in March, while 
Lee surrendered the 11th of April following — so he can boast 
of an honorable discharge! But enough of this at present. 
But before I close I wish to inform you that I have not seen 
or heard anything of the five hundred dollars. Please write 
at your early convenience. From Mother B. to her faraway 
boy. 

P. S. — You will find a very good account of my work in 
"The Boys in Blue," and also in Gail Hamilton's ''Woman's 
Wrongs. ' ' 

I give this letter with no thought of stirring up 
»trife or contention. That would be useless and very 
undesirable, but simply because it is so like the dear 
mother when provoked to ''righteous indignation," as 
assuredly she had reason to be in this case. Remem- 
bering how she was entrusted, "without note or bond," 
with many thousands of dollars of money and millions 
of dollars worth of sanitary supplies in war times, and 
afterwards in her missionary work in New York and 
other cities, and for the sufferers in the great 
forest fires in Michigan and the Chicago fire — 
the Fitch & Gould Railroad Company alone placed 
ten thousand dollars in her hands for this purpose, 
leaving her to use it according to her own judgment — 
remembering, too, the amounts in money and 
provisions and- clothing given to her to be used for the 
destitute Kansans in the year when, from Indian raids, 
droughts, and the ''plague of the grasshopper," our 
fair prairies were laid waste, and our homes made 
desolate, and how scrupulously every penny and every 



154 MOTHER BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

article was made to do "the greatest good to the great- 
est number," how can we wonder that she felt deeply 
hurt and indignant to have it said that she had not 
"judgment enough" to make the best use of a paltry 
five hundred dollars? Her lack was not in judgment, 
but in too great forgetfulness of herself and her 
needs ; the needs of others were never forgotten. 
Shall w^e condemn her for this following in the foot- 
steps of the "Elder Brother?" This loving service, so 
deep, so sincere, that self has no place there? Rather 
let us be glad that we have had her among us — a 
strong, beautiful type of motherhood, a "cup bearer" 
to the very last here, and still, we must believe, a "cup 
bearer" in the new life to which she has gone. 

Another soldier boy between whom and Mother 
Bickerdyke there was a great love, J. S. Eastwood, 
formerly of Illinois, now of Eureka, Kan., sends me 
ten beautiful letters that she wrote him in the years 
from 1888 to 1893. This man is one of the two boys 
of eighteen who each lost a leg at the battle of "Peach 
Tree Creek" and were cared for by Mrs. Bickerdyke 
in her hospital at Marietta, Ga. They were so young 
and so alike in many ways that she called them her 
"babies" and her "twins." (The other "twin" is Alvin 
Waite, of the 127th Illinois Infantry, as Mr. Eastwood 
was of the 48th Illinois Infantry.) These letters are 
teeming with love and motherly interest, full of a 
mother's solicitude. How she cautions him about be- 
ing careful not to get a fall on the "poor stump" of a 
leg left him ! She tells him : "Whenever you 
think to go out in slippery weather remember your 
Mother Bickerdyke forbids it." She rejoices with 
him in having a dear wife and children, and plans to 
meet him either in his own home or at encampments 
in different places. She tells him of her health, of 
her hopes and plans, her work, and all the "ups and 
downs" of daily life. She tells him of meeting one 
doctor who attended him while he was in the hospital, 
and of having a letter from another, and how tenderly 
they spoke of him. She says : "Dr. Gour says in his 



OTHER LETTERS. 155 

last letter to me, 'Can it be possible Eastwood is up 
and doing ? God bless him !' " adding, 'Were there 
ever two such sympathetic men as Dr. Goslin and Dr. 
Gour? I revere these two doctors as I do my soldier 
boys. They were grand men and true, and did their 
work without flinching." She writes of her plan to 
have them (Mr. Eastwood and his "twin," Mr. Waite) 
meet at St. Joseph, Mo., at an encampment and in- 
troduce them to Dr. Goslin, saying, "The old Doctor's 
heart will leap for joy to see you. When I told him I 
had met you in Topeka he said, 'God has preserved 
those boys; God bless them!' Now be sure and go," 
she urges, "it will be a rare treat for you and your 
wife. We may never have such an opportunity to 
meet again such dear old friends." She tells him 
Dr. Goslin is "the same lovable, kind and affectionate 
doctor that he was at Marietta, and how kindly he 
spoke of you. No father could speak more highly of 
you." She wants to "keep my boys all together as far 
as possible." They have such deep and sacred hold 
on her heart she cannot let them go, so she writes and 
writes, and writes, in sickness and in health, even as 
an own mother would do. What wonder the soldiers 
cherish these letters even as they cherish her memory? 
What wonder that they count them too precious to 
give to the public, but would hold them sacred to 
themselves alone? To us all her memory is as a 
precious gem — a "pearl of great price" in life's casket ; 
but to the soldier it is doubly, trebly so, because of the 
hardships, the dangers, and the privations they bore 
together, and all she did and was to them. Of her we 
may say in the quaintly beautiful words of proverbs : 
"Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou ex- 
cellest them all," and truly her own "work shall praise 
her." 

Mr. Alvin Waite (the other "twin") writes of her : 

I never saw that dear old woman but once after the war. 
That was at the National Encampment at St. Louis some years 
since. She there corralled about a dozen of us old cripples in 
the parlor of the Southern Hotel. She would not let any of 
us get ourselves a chair. She formed a circle, taking a seat 



156 MOTHER BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

in the center, and there talked, laughed and cried alternately 
as she told each how or under what circumstances she found 
us, and how she kept many of us alive for many days. It was 
remarkable how she remembered at what battlefields she found 
us each one. She remembered most of our names. Dear Mother 
Bickerdyke is now only a memory. She has gone to her great 
reward. 



CHAPTER XXL 

IN WHICH WE SAY GOOD-BYE. 

' * Every age 
Bequeaths the next for heritage 
No lazy luxury of delight, 
But strenuous labor for the right. ' ' 

And we shall best show our love and reverence for 
Mother Bickerdyke by imitating her in all her good 
works and by standing as stanchly and as fearlessly 
for the right as she ever did. Though we no longer 
need army nurses, the sick and the poor are always 
with us, and Peace has her victories, her occasions for 
the use of heroic virtues and bravery, no less surely 
than a time of War. While life lasts — while "we hope 
and resolve and aspire and pray," we shall have need 
of women as well as men with "strong minds, great 
hearts, true faith and ready hands," such as our 
Mother Bickerdyke was. Her memory will be ever 
fresh with us. Her blunt honesty, the plain, un- 
adorned English in which she clothed her thoughts, 
the homely truths she uttered, will stay with us and 
will help us to "quit our meanness" and live clean and 
true in all places and under all circumstances. We 
shall remember how often she told us "it doesn't pay 
to be little or m.ean ; nothing pays but love and de- 
cency and truth." 

We shall see her as she was when, in the strength 
and joy of her mature womanhood, she took up her 
arduous work in tlie army, putting aside the detaining 
hands of her little sons that other mothers' sons might 
be cared for, bringing something of the order and 
com.fort of home into the dreary hospitals; making 
glad the "waste places" wherever she went; so trust- 
worthy, so competent that none feared to trust her; 



158 MOTHEE BICKERDYKE AS I KNEW HER. 

SO determined ajid untiring that she never "went to 
the wall" in acknowledged defeat. We shall follow 
her in memory through camp and field and upon the 
long marches through all those terrible years, the ever- 
recurring scenes of which made such deep lines on her 
face and still deeper, more ineffaceable ones upon her 
tender woman's heart, we shall see her a minister- 
ing angel to the sick and dying, listening to the last 
message from lips fast growing cold, gathering up 
the precious pictures of mother, wife, children, sister 
or sweetheart the soldier had carried through all the 
cruel years of separation, the sight of which had 
helped him to do his duty "as a man and a soldier to 
God and my country," as one brave boy wrote in his 
"good-bye" letter. How tenderly and with what wise 
sympathy she writes the letter to send with these 
keepsakes, telling how nobly the soldier did his duty, 
how bravely he answered "Here!" at the roll call of 
Death, stamping it all with such high patriotism and 
holy love of country, with such joy of service in her 
bitter need, that the spirit of the one bereft was up- 
borne by the joy of sacrifice and made strong to bear 
the lonely days yet to come. We follow her while she 
searches under the midnight sky over the death- 
strewn field at Fort Donelson; we go with her on 
and on to Shiloh, to Savannah, Perrysville, Louisville, 
Memphis, Vicksburg, Jackson, Corinth, Pittsburg 
Landing, Fort Henry, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Mis- 
sion Ridge— on and on through all the field hospitals 
of the Atlanta cam.paign, at Nashville, and so "on to 
the sea" with Sherman and his gallant men. We see 
her watching with aching heart through seventeen 
hard fought battles, caring for thousands of wounded, 
seeing human bodies mangled and torn in every con- 
ceivable way — bleeding and dying — and we wonder 
how did woman's eyes keep their sight? How did 
woman's heart endure such horrors, such feaful an- 
guish? No wonder she used to cover her face close 
with her hands and say, "Oh, it will haunt me for- 
ever, forever!" Yet she never let any scene weaken 
her, but shut her eyes as far as possible to the horror 



WE SAY ''GOOD-BYE.'' 169 

and saw only the need for action, the work that was 
ever before her — grand old Mother Bickerdyke. No 
soldier was ever braver, none could do more than she 
did that we might have "one country and one flag." 
Words seem so empty when I try to tell of it all, but 
the heart knows — the hearts of the soldiers and of 
those who love them, scattered all over our land — 
east, west, north and south — these hearts know the 
story of Mother Bickerdyke and will cherish it to 
their dying day — and beyond ! beyond ! It is a story 
that cannot die while we love our country. So long 
as we can be thrilled by heroic deeds or gladdened by 
loving service, this story will live, and we shall say 
over and over again with ever deepening love and 
gladness, 'Thank God for Mother Bickerdyke and the 
work she did," and to the story of her army life we 
shall add that of her life among the poor in New York, 
Chicago and San Francisco — yes, in any city or town 
where she pitched her tent and tarried for a time. 
We shall tell how she helped the discharged soldiers 
to find a place and a way to make a home and a "happy 
household clime for weens and wife." We shall hear 
again her ringing call for help, her impassioned plea 
for money, food and clothing for the struggling Kan- 
sans, so many of them her "boys," when Indian raids 
and the "plague of the grasshopper" had left them 
destitute. We shall see her the most loved and 
honored of all at campfires and reunions. How her 
face glows with love and joy as the brave old "boys" 
crowd around her ! How they hug her until it "seems 
as if they would break every bone in her body." How 
eager they are to tell her the story of their efforts, 
their failures and their successes since the war, and 
she listens — listens with a word of encouragement for 
one, a word of praise for another, and words of love 
for all. Dear old Mother Bickerdyke ! 

We follow her on through the lingering years — 
years that, though they left the marks of growing age 
and feebleness upon her body, yet left the strong mind 
untouched, the heart still serene and brave, and oh, 
how we glory in her womanhood ! How we rejoice to 



160 MOTHEE BICKEEDYKE AS I KNEW HEE. 

hold her among us ! How we delight to honor her in 
every way possible, trying to blot out with our kind- 
ness the memory of her years of hardship and denial, 
though we would never forget the grandness of the 
service rendered through them all. We hear her 
saying again, "I have a commission from God to do 
all I can for every miserable sinner that comes my 
way. He is always sure of two friends — God and 
me," and we know that only the opening of the great 
book of Life will reveal the extent and beauty of her 
work, that only the angels of love can keep the rec- 
ord true and tell of the thousands to whom she has 
not only helped to bring bodily health, but to whom 
she has brought the good tidings of hope and love. 
We know that, through her brave gospel of hope, 
work and care many have been brought back to man- 
hood and womanhood, many have left the ways of sin 
and entered upon the beautiful, though rugged paths 
of Hfe and love. Faithful old Mother Bickerdyke ! 

Again the bells are ringing to celebrate her eight- 
ieth birthday and friends are coming from far and 
near for one more meeting with her. A meeting that, 
though the shadow of the parting was over all, was 
yet a sacred and happy time. We hear the words of 
praise and of benediction as she moves among the 
throng, bright and cheery, though her face is deeply 
lined with the story of the passing years, and her soft 
brown hair is white as snow. Her eyes are sunken, 
but they have not lost their sparkle ; they hold yet the 
holy depths of mother love and a great pride shows 
in them as she looks upon the manly forms of her 
"boys," and hears their words of welcome and con- 
gratulation. They urge her to visit them in their own 
homes — to come here and go there, but she says a 
kindly "No" to them all now, for her race was almost 
run and her home, her son were the dearest of all, 
and she would stay with them while she might. "I 
am old now," she said, "and all I want is to be let 
alone, to live quietly at home as any other woman 
would. I've had enough of publicity. Let me rest. 
Let me rest." 



WE SAY ''GOOD-BYE." 161 

So the quiet months pass, and the end comes nearer, 
nearer, but with no dark clouds, no forebodings, only 
a peaceful letting go of earthly things and a firmer 
grasp and comprehension of things spiritual, a trust- 
ful resting in the love that guided and sustained her 
through all of the busy, changeful years of earth life, 
and that would still guide and sustain her. She knew 
that, come what might, she could not ''drift beyond 
the Father's care." She did not lose her cheerfulness ; 
her interest in those for whom she had lived and 
worked for so long was unchanged. She was Mother 
Bickerdyke to the last here, and is she not still Mother 
Bickerdyke in that Home "not built with hands" to 
which she has gone? 

A great peace rested on the beautiful cold face as 
she lay in her last sleep, and the story of her life 
was there — that life so deep and true and strong, so 
full of beautiful activities and of womanly sympathies 
— full of all that was good and beautiful, and yet but 
faintly foreshadowing the great soul that had looked 
out of its windows — a face it is good to have known 
and blessed to remember. A life consecrated to high 
duties, enriched by service, made holy by love — a life 
that must go on still, strong and true, tender and kind, 
blest and blessing. Hail, Mother Bickerdyke, hail 
and farewell ! 




MONUMENT AT GALESBURG, ILL. 



APPENDIX I. 

UNVEILING OF THE MONUMENT. 

Under the most auspicious circumstances, and in the presence 
of a large concourse of veterans, visitors and citizens, the 
''Mother" Bickerdyke monument was unveiled to the public 
on yesterday afternoon. The attendant assemblage was im- 
bued with that enthusiasm and deeply inculcated respect for 
the memory of that grand army nurse, which can only come 
from a knowledge of the woman's unselfish devotion to the 
needs of the suffering soldiers. The patriotic melodies of the 
band enlivened the occasion and brought added inspiration. 
The vocal music under the leadership of Professor Bentley was 
good to a degree and was appropriate to the time and place. 
The addresses, from first to last, were delivered in a pleasing 
and acceptable manner and were well timed. The program 
was carried out without a hitch and no untoward incident 
occurred to mar this successful historic event. 

The program was initiated with music by the band, after 
which a prayer of fervent and inspiring sentiments was of- 
fered by the department chaplain, Mrs. Euby Loring. Mrs. 
Fannie Blazer, who as the president of the Mother Bickerdyke 
Association had charge of the exercises of the afternoon, con- 
ducted them throughout in a capable and business-like manner 
that won unstinted words of praise from all. 

A pleasing interpolation at this point was the reading by 
Hon. Wilfred Arnold of the Mother Bickerdyke memorial ap- 
propriation, which became a law of the state of Illinois July 1, 
having been signed the 15th of May preceding by the then 
state executive, Eichard Yates. 

Mrs. Kitson was introduced by Mrs. Fannie Blazer to the 
audience following the reading of the law as passed and was 
accorded a highly complimentary reception by the audience of 



164 APPENDIX. 

people gathered to witness the unveiling., Mrs. Kitson, who 
wrought the noble design of the monument, has assuredly cre- 
ated a noble conception of sentiment and tenderness, which is 
receiving none but words of praise from every side. 

The song, ' ' Tenting Tonight, ' ' was sung by the following 
male voices, led by Prof. Bentley: W. B. Carlton, Earl Bridge, 
Everett Hinchliff, Harry Hammond, Victor Lytle, Ira Bacon, 
Henry Arnold, John McHard, Ray Arnold and Howard Wil- 
liamson, The address of welcome by Mayor Sanborn was next 
delivered to the visitors assembled upon the occasion to com- 
memorate anew the deeds of Mother Bickerdyke and to cement 
more strongly the ties of comradeship. Mayor Sanborn said: 

** President and Members of the Mother Bickerdyke Monu- 
ment Association, Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen: It was 
my fortune to have personally known Mother Bickerdyke be- 
fore she entered the service of the Union army. Though a 
hard-working woman with a big family, when the lamented 
Lincoln called for men and women, she was among the first to 
respond. With what ardor she plied her calling, privates and 
officers alike are well acquainted. She was the soldiers' friend. 
In sickness, in distress or death, in rain or sunshine, in warmth 
or in cold, night or day, she was on hand to guide and help 
the boys who were helping to preserve the Union of our 
fathers. 

"It is one of the proudest moments of my life on this occa- 
sion, for, as the official head of the city of Galesburg, I am 
designated to extend to the ladies of the Bickerdyke Monu- 
ment Association and their distinguished guests and all com- 
rades the most hearty welcome and Godspeed of the loyal 
people of our city, and to say to you that we as a city are 
proud to have the remains of so good and useful a person 
deposited with us for safe keeping for the ages to come. 

' ' We are also prouder that this beautiful monument, beau- 
tiful in structure and design, has been erected permanently in 
our city, and we are glad to have this opportunity to add our 
part in honoring so noble a woman, and we express our thanks 
and, as the countless concourse shall view and pass this mag- 
nificent statue, they will ponder and say, 'Well done, thou 
good and faithful servant.' " 

Mrs. Marietta Erwin of Galesburg next unveiled the monu- 
ment, and as the folds of the old flag gracefully fell to the 
earth and revealed the monument, clear-cut and artistic, the 
audience gave forth loud and enthusiastic applause for the 
honor of the woman whose deeds were portrayed, and a com- 
plimentary greeting to the sculptress. 

Mrs. Fannie Blazer, as president of the Mother Bickerdyke 
Memorial Association, made at this juncture the speech of 
presentation and gave over the monument to the care of the 
Board of Supervisors. 

The speech was brief, but of elevating sentiment and spoken 
with a sincerity and depth of conviction. Said the speaker: 



APPENDIX. 165 

' ' Throughout this entire republic ; throughout the confines 
of the universe we oft hold exercises of a like nature, which 
celebrate the heroic deeds of brave men, but today we are 
assembled to do honor to the heroic, noble and inspiring deeds 
of a woman, whose character, in its gentleness, in its firmness, 
its wonderful patriotism and love for humanity has been sur- 
passed by no one in the annals of profane history. 

' ' Mother Bickerdyke was a resident of Galesburg, and this 
occasion does Galesburg great honor, and Illinois, the great 
commonwealth we all love so well, is also honored in having 
the body of the beloved nurse in her soil. 

"We are met today almost under the shadows of the walls 
of the old church building where one Sunday morning Mother 
Bickerdyke arose and pledged her services to the union and 
never ceased in her devotion to the nation and her boys until 
her heart was stilled in death. 

* ' It was by the united efforts of the small body of women 
known as the Mother Bickerdyke Memorial Association, with 
the aid and generosity of the great state of Illinois, that this 
unveiling was made possible. It is peculiarly relevant that 
this piece of art, serving to commemorate the deeds of a noble 
woman, should be created by the hands of woman. 

' * The lessons to be derived from its elevating sentiment and 
uprightness of purpose are plain and speak in a mute lan- 
guage of love and patriotism. May the countless thousands of 
feet which shall pass and repass this monument in after years 
uphold hearts that shall look upon it and be imbued with 
honor for our grand, inspiring ' Old Glory ' and love of country 
and native land. ' ' 

The presentation of the monument to the board of super- 
visors then followed. This was done by reason of the group 
being located upon county grounds and it will be cared for 
henceforth and at all times by the county of Knox. 

Hon. James Eebstock, as chairman of the Knox County 
Board of Supervisors, accepted the charge of the welfare of 
the monument in the following pertinent words: 

"Mr. Blazer: It is my pleasant duty as chairman of the 
board of supervisors in their behalf and in behalf of the 
people of this county to accept this monument which has been 
erected to the memory of Mary A. Bickerdyke. 

"Mother Bickerdyke, as she was affectionately called in 
Northern hospital, camp and field, is one of those characters 
which will live eternal in history and in the hearts of the 
patriotic citizens of this country. In future ages when all 
who are assembled here today shall have long been numbered 
among the dead, her name will stand as the embodiment of 
womanly patriotism. In her is represented the loyalty, the 
steadfast devotion to the cause of freedom, and the tireless 
efforts of the women of this country to relieve the sick and 
dying soldier, and to mitigate, if possible, the terrible suffer- 
ings, the unspeakable horrors of war. 



166 APPENDIX. 

With open arms, therefore, do we accept this gift, and 
pledge ourselves and the coming generations to guard and 
defend the spot where it stands with that earnestness and 
patriotic zeal, and with the same love that characterized her 
whom it represents, in all her ministrations on the field of 
battle in that great war for freedom." 

The address of dedication was delivered by former Governor 
Richard Yates and was an effort that both pleased in senti- 
ment and thoroughly entertained in delivery, which was in- 
terrupted frequently by hearty applause. The speech follows: 

"Called by the voice of partial friends among you, I have 
come here today to say a few words upon this sweetly solemn 
occasion and in this imposing presence. It is my duty to en- 
deavor, to the best of my feeble ability, to give suitable ex- 
pression to the sentiments which have brought you here and 
to the teachings of this hour. We are not here for entertain- 
ment today; we are here for the solemn recognition of unut- 
terable obligation. 

"I am persuaded, fellow citizens, that, next to religion, the 
chief glory of the world and its civilization today is the citi- 
zenship enjoyed by Americans. It is a citizenship cherishing 
justice and embellishing freedom and adorning manhood. 
Hence, all along our wending way, it has been deemed worth 
fighting for, and worth dying for. Every true American has 
considered it his duty to battle for an elevated and perfect 
civilization. Out of such aspirations in the American's heart, 
such emotions in his inmost soul, have come the devotion and 
the sacrifice which have placed us upon the pinnacle of pride 
which we occupy today in the sisterhood of nations. I am 
convinced that every war fought by America, every degree of 
progress it ever attained, every onward step it ever took, was 
to establish an unprecedented, unequaled and sublime citizen- 
ship. And I am satisfied that every effort put forth to estab- 
lish that citizenship is to be honored and remembered by the 
citizens of today. 

"For this hour, the thoughtful of this nation live again 
in the tumultuous times of ' sixty-one. ' Visions of the past, 
crowded with fast rushing events, rise today in the mind of 
the middle-aged man. He remembers the preliminary excite- 
ment. The country convulsed from day to day with ominous 
occurrences. This state trembling beneath the mighty blows 
struck by renowned champions of public opinion. Every com- 
munity stirred to its foundations in the mighty crisis. John 
Brown partakes of the excited spirit of the times. The un- 
fortunate old man is easily overcome. John Brown's body 
lies in its grave. But the spirit that poured its life into his 
ceases not its onward march, and in fear of that feeling, now 
ruling in a million hearts, the great slave conspiracy resolves 
to resort to desperate measures. 

"TTie new President, leaving his Illinois home for the na- 
tional capital, is so surrounded by menacing difficulties, that 



APPENDIX. 167 

fie owns his strong mind, courageous heart and mighty soul to 
be unequal to the unprecedented task. To his neighbors as- 
sembled to bid him farewell he says: 

' ' ' There has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest 
even upon the father of his country, and, so feeling, I cannot 
but turn and look for that support without which it will be 
impossible to perform that great task. I turn, then, and look 
to the great American people and to that God who has never 
forsaken them.' 

''Grand and sublime figure! How he towers aloft in his 
pure nobility; how he guided this struggling and suffering 
country with patient, merciful hand; how he stood like a shield 
and a bulwarlj strong and firm, between the Union and all the 
perils that assailed it. Fling open the baskets; pour forth the 
flowers; cause his tomb to blush and to quiver and to glow 
with all the beauty and the loveliness and grace that nature 
can bestow, and still the spirit of the grand, majestic man 
will break from beneath the fragrance, and, rising godlike 
over us, reflect the light of a matchless integrity and prudence 
and perfection over all that is or will be fair and good in 
Americanism. 

''Noble men of sixty-one! Stephen A. Douglas stands in 
Chicago saying: 'Before God my conscience is clear; I have 
struggled long for a peaceful solution; the return we receive 
is war; there are only two sides to this question; there can be 
no neutrals in this war, only patriots and traitors. ' 

" 'With malice towards none and charity for all,' call after 
call comes from the eapitol for troops. The call is not in 
vain. Massachusetts sends her noblest. New York puts forth 
her proudest, Ohio furnishes her bravest, California despatches 
her boldest, Illinois forwards her best. Grierson, Ingersoll, 
Prentiss and Eawlins; Morrison, McClernand, Palmer and 
Black; Oglesby goes; Grant goes; Logan goes. 

"Troops the nation called one day, 
Men of valor, strong and steady ; 
Ere the echo died away 

Illinois had answered 'Ready !' 

"In the camps and on the ocean. 

Braving ever tropic heat. 
Proving ever their devotion. 

Knowing nothing of defeat ; 
All they had thus bravely tendered, 

Here and there death claimed a boy 
Freely, but with tears, surrendered 

By the State of Illinois. 

"Troops the nation called one day, 
Men of valor, strong and steady ; 
Ere the echo died away 

Illinois had answered 'Ready !' " 

"Halleck and Hancock, Sherman and Sheridan; Hooker 
and Burnside; Thomas and Franklin; hundreds more, whose 



168 APPENDIX. 

names we know; thousands more whose names are unknown to 
us; the whole grand, heroic host! Mighty convulsion! The 
entire continent rocking to and fro! The battle cry of free- 
dom ringing from ocean to ocean! Outbursts of loyalty 
shaking every northern commonwealth! Puritan and pioneer 
burning with patriotic zeal! Government of, for and by the 
people shall not perish! You all know the result. Popular 
government did survive and so did the Union and Liberty. 

''And, ah, let us not forget that there was a parting in a 
million homes. How often that parting was a parting forever 
between sweetheart and lover, between sister and brother, be- 
tween husband and wafe, between son and mother! Oh, for 
scarlet geraniums and sweet verbenas, and purple violets to 
strew the graves of the lover and brother! Oh, for pure white 
jessamine and yellow buttercup and delicate heliotrope so to 
cover those of the sister and sweetheart, as to fully and fit- 
tingly express the agony of that parting, the pitiful but un- 
pitied throes of the battle death, and the untold suffering of 
those ruined loving lives at home. Oh, for begonia and pe- 
tunia and hyacinth and fuchsia and lily and rose for the 
mother and the wife Avhose son and husband went, then, from 
their embraces, away to the city, on to the camp, and at last 
to the nameless mound near the enemy's prison stockade. 
Sublime sacrifices, glorious and grand, tender and touching, 
beautiful and blessed ! The fragrance of their memory hovers 
over us today like a benediction from the past! 

"Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead, 

Dear as the blood ye gave. 
No impious footstep here shall tread 

The herbage of your grave : 
Nor shall your glory be forgot 

While Fame her record keeps. 
Or Honor points the hallowed spot 

Where Valor i)roudly sleeps. 
On Fame's eternal camping ground 

Their silent tents are spread ; 
And Glory guards with solemn round 

The bivouac of the dead." 

"Among the sacrifices of that awful day and time none 
were greater than that of the women — none more intense, none 
more agonizing, none more touching. Never did a boy in blue, 
falling prone upon his face with a jagged bullet in his heart, 
stop the bullet there. It had no stopping place until it had 
passed over hillside and river, over mountain and lake, until 
at last it pierced some loving woman-heart at home. 

* ' Eank and station, condition and situation made no dif- 
ference. The awful desolation invaded alike the life of fash- 
ion and wealth at the metropolis and 'the short and simple 
annals of the poor.' In the great majority of cases the home 
entered and blasted was a humble one. In such instances the 
actual manual effort of the soldier had been actually and posi- 



APPENDIX. 169 

lively needed before the war days. In not a few eases a 
soldier who survived wounds and disease returned home to a 
family which had lost the mother or the daughter because of 
actual exposure in the fields resulting in some fatal malady, 
possibly pneumonia or consumption. But even when the calam- 
ity was not so dire as thiS; who can number the women whose 
lives were shortened and existence beclouded by the ever- 
present anxiety increasing at times to an appalling intensity? 
Four hundred thousand homes wore, at the end of the struggle, 
the badge of the Mast full measure of devotion.' And every 
family of the two million which furnished armed defenders of 
the flag suffered almost as much in anticipation as did the 
four hundred families in reality. 

' ' There was no inspiring bugle call to rouse flesh and spirit 
to an enthusiasm absolutely disregardful of danger, among 
the suffering, waiting ones at home. TTiere was no ' whirlwind 
of the battle charge, where men become iron with nerves of 
steel' there. On the contrary, every nerve was tense and quiv- 
ering and every faculty was alert and strained, expecting the 
long awaited blow. 

' * What will ever be done — what can ever be done — to per- 
petuate the memory and keep alive the reality of these sacri- 
fices? Not even all the men who actually died in the 'red 
glare of the cannon 's mouth ' will ever have a monument 
erected over them by the republic. Such a testimonial, how- 
ever deeply and universally desired, is impossible. A central 
monument in every county seat throughout the republic, com- 
memorating the sufferings in war of American womanhood in 
general, is impracticable. But happily it is possible for one 
commonwealth to pay its tribute to one war-woman of heroism; 
we have the proud privileges of participating in this tribute. 

* * I deem it fortunate for Illinois and for all who have, by 
reading and by sitting at the feet of wisdom, learned of 
woman 's work in the Civil war, that in one case, at least, a 
suitable memorial of womanly devotion during that period 
is possible. 

''The ladies of this Mother Bickerdyke Memorial Associa- 
tion have made this possible. They dedicate today to 'Mary 
Bickerdyke, Mother, ' this memorial. She, in whose honor we 
meet here, was an army nurse — one of the most distinguished 
of army nurses. 

' ' She not only suffered as all suffered who were of the sex 
of tenderness and sympathy, but because she had had training 
as a nurse she went to the front in 1861 — not to be mustered 
out until 1866. 

' ' In the addresses already delivered, the noble character- 
istics of this noble woman have been so fully referred to that 
no further effort can add to her fame, but the efforts of this 
woman and her associates can never be recalled too often or 
too publicly. 



170 APPENDIX. 

''Oh heroic sisterhood of army nurses, thy devotion shall 
never be forgotten while valor is honored and bravery is 
praised ! 

''Beloved sisterhood, who walked amid appalling horrors of 
pain and death — scenes from which strongest men turned 
away — ^who can paint thine own exquisite torture amid all 
thy bravery and serenity ^ Thine it was to stand, all but 
helpless, though never hopeless, while surgeon's knife added 
agony unspeakable to many a racked body apparently about 
to separate from soul. 

' ' Thine it was to listen to messages for the loved ones at 
home, whispered with fast failing breath. 

' ' Do you, people of Illinois of today, think that testimonials 
either of stone or bronze or flowers can ever repay an army 
nurse for these demands upon her very life? 

"Of course she had her happy hours — when knowledge came 
of victory over fever or other dread diseases or over frightful 
wounds — and that the message to be sent home was of hope 
and joy and light and life. 

"Possibly no woman in all the world found these hours 
more exquisite than the army nurse — and possibly no such 
hours were more frequent and happy than those enjoyed by 
Mother Bickerdyke. At any rate, Mary Bickerdyke did her 
great duty. She bound up the wounds of the afflicted, and 
when she did so she administered a soothing balm to the 
lacerated hearts at home. 

' ' Cairo and Paducah, Fort Donelson and Shiloh, Corinth and 
luka, Vicksburg and Memphis, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Al- 
toona and Marietta, Huntsville and Beaufort, Washington and 
Camp Butler are a few of the places where she fought in 
hospitals, a gigantic winning battle against death for human 
lives. 

"With her hot foods and soups and her stimulating drinks 
and restoratives, she fought among the wounded ranks upon 
the battlefield, too. 

' ' She tore up and used to bandage wounds all her clothing 
which was capable of such use, although it w^as made, with 
care and patience, by loving ones back home in Illinois, who 
were full of the feeling that she needed such things more 
than anybody. She listened at night, on edges of battlefields, 
for groans of wounded men overlooked, and when she heard 
them went out herself through rain and storm, with lanterns 
and stretchers, and found such men and brought them in. 

' ' She sang songs of home and heaven to dying men, while 
shot and shell fell in the midst of her field-hospital. 

"She not only lessened the pain of thousands, but she con- 
tributed, by her contagious example and leadership, to the 
comfort of untold thousands more. 

"By her persistence, at all hours of day and night, summer 
and winter, in besieging headquarters of commanding oflScers 



APPENDIX. 171 

for forwarding of supplies and furnishing of helpers — always 
granted because she simply would not be denied — she made 
every post commander come to his senses, and every army com- 
mander realize the importance of her department. 

' ' In this way she indirectly improved the condition of thou- 
sands of sick and wounded in other sections — two results fol- 
lowing: First, thousands of homes more happy, and second, 
the service benefited by loyalty more unfaltering and enlist- 
ment more unlimited. 

**Is it any wonder that in councils of war and in halls of 
congress it was said of her, ' Her services were worth more to 
General Sherman's army than any brigadier general in it'? 

''In three short furloughs during five full years of service 
she visited enough large cities and addressed enough large 
assemblages to obtain contributions of food and fruits and 
clothing and medicines and hospital furnishings and first-aid 
appliances that were ample. 

' ' She knew what was needed, and went after it, and got it. 
Upon one occasion she was chief nurse or matron of hospitals 
in Memphis. There were nine thousand men in those hos- 
pitals. Milk was needed. It could be had only in limited 
quantities. It cost fifty cents a quart. She got a furlough. 
She came to Illinois. She begged for one hundred cows. She 
got them. I am happy to say that Jacob Strong of my own 
native town of Jacksonville donated the one hundred cows. 

''Her re-entry into Memphis was amid the lowing of the 
one hundred cows and cackling of one thousand hens, and 
must have been one of the real triumphs of the war. 

"Do you not suppose that there was more rejoicing over 
that triumph in at least nine thousand homes than there ever 
was over any bloody victory? 

' ' I venture to say that at least nine thousand prayers for 
Mary Bickerdyke went right straight up to the throne of 
Mercy as soon as that invasion of Illinois was publicly known. 

"She met all demands upon her; she hoped all things; she 
believed all things; she endured all things; she conquered all 
things; she was charity personified. The Almighty will be her 
generous rewarder in the Great Day when all things will be 
made right. Mrs. Bickerdyke never had any doubt about 
religious relationship. She stated once to Mary A. Livermore: 

" *I have a commission from the Lord God Almighty to do 
all I can for every miserable creature who comes in my way; 
he is always sure of two friends — God and me.' 

"She added her great and holy share to the stupendous sum 
total of sympathy and relief from suffering which character- 
ized that day and which was the greatest demonstration of real 
charity ever seen by mankind since the Savior walked among 
the sons of men and healed them all. 

"Therefore, honor and glory and praise and love to Mother 
Bickerdyke, and so long as lovers of true manhood and woman- 
hood here come and go may there be found here everlasting 



172 APPENDIX. 

memorial for her, to cause inspiration for the loftiest deed 
and the most noble aim — to keep alive not only patriotism 
but love of right and of humanity. ' ' 

The unveiling poem of Z. P. Hotchkiss, junior vice com- 
mander of the G. A. E., was given with great depth of feeling, 
and in the closing sentiments, with the salute to the dead as 
paid by the old soldiers to the nurse who was so much admired 
and loved by all, the scene was peculiarly impressive. The 
following is the poem : 

Unveiled by that banner, Mother, 
This the picture on vision's screen, 

Kneeling like a Spartan lover 

Raising to soldier lips the old canteen. 

Ladies, of this memorial. Mother 

Thou, this work of enduring art, 
For in the group, we discover. 

The artist had a woman's heart. 

This, the woman we call Mother, 

Is your sister, that we adore. 
In deeds of love none ranked above her. 

In hospital or army corps. 

The holiest name on earth — Mother — 

Is the one we boys still like ; 
In memory there dwells no other 

Like that of Mother Bickerdyke. 

The Grand Army — dear dead Mother — 

Circles, Camps, Tents and Corps, 
Honor, as they would no other. 

For they love the name you bore. 

At midnight we have seen you. Mother, 

Amid the wreckage of the fight. 
Bravely stand, where dared no other. 

And by your lantern's friendly light 

Scanning each hero face. Mother, 

With your woman's heart in grief. 
There, where angels seemed to hover 

You had brought the boy relief. 

In our hearts your grave, Mother ; 

Love, the monument we rear ; 
You stood closer than a brother ; 

Our tribute, still, a veteran's tear. 

Sleep thou in fair Lockwood, Mother, 

Where floats that flag you loved the best, 

Each memorial day we'll cover 

With flowers thy tomb — there rest. 

Here, in sad bereavement. Mother, 

We hail you on the bivouac shore ; 
Comrades, Attention ! Friends, uncover ! 

Salute the dead, in peace, forevermore. 

The song, * * Illinois, ' ' always popular with gatherings of a 
patriotic nature especially, was rendered by the male chorus. 



APPENDIX. 173 

The address by National Commander of the G, A. R. James 
Tanner, which followed, was a splendid effort, a rugged and 
satisfying speech filled with sentiments of noble patriotism 
and elevating precepts. Said the orator : 

* ' Those olden days stir me to glorious and honored recollec- 
tions. Well do I recall the splendid ability and noble deeds 
of that great war governor of Illinois, Dick Yates; that 
prince of soldiers. Gen. U. S. Grant, and the mighty eagle-eyed 
John A. Logan. 

' * The cause for which we are gathered also reminds me 
that we must, while honoring the man behind the gun, pay 
homage to the woman back of that man for her great sacri- 
fices and heroic actions shall live as long as history is recorded. 

* ' There was a time when our patriotism was at a low ebb, 
but it was ever and anon raised and kept living by the moth- 
ers, sisters and sweethearts. I tell you this day will always 
be a red letter day for the state encampments of Illinois his- 
tory for the cause in which we are met today, to pay honor 
to the memory of woman. 

' ' That civilization which has not paid homage to woman- 
hood has fallen into decay. To discredit womanhood is to seal 
the doom of any people under the canopy of heaven. 

' ' I admire the man that is desirous of leading a peaceful 
life, but when woman is insulted let him tear into the duskiest 
of fights. ' ' 

At this point Commander Tanner devoted some time at 
length to the memory and deeds of Mother Bickerdyke and 
her hold upon the boys of Sherman's army and her wide repu- 
tation for ability and tenderness wherever the flag was un- 
furled. 

The speech was concluded with a glowing and exalted com- 
pliment to the part women played in the War of the Eebellion 
and how their gentle words of soothing and deft touches made 
the men of war thank God for their presence and caused it to 
become easier for many a soldier to enter into the gates of 
heaven. 

The final address of the afternoon's exercises was that 
delivered by Department Commander Gen. John C. Smith, who 
spoke as follows: 

' ' After the pleasing ceremonies attending the unveiling of 
this monument designed to perpetuate the memory of one of 
America's noblest women, * Mother Bickerdyke,' in which we 
have all participated, it is my intention to detain you but a 
few minutes. No language at my command, no poetry, no 
matter how choice in diction or sweet in rhythm, can add 
honor to the memory of one who did so much for our sick 
and wounded comrades as did this angel of hospital and bat- 
tlefield. She was but a woman, such as we see about us, but 
such a woman as gives birth to heroes and by her loving kind- 
ness makes heroes of men. 



174 APPENDIX. 

' * Illinois is proud of her warriors, and names among the 
foremost that silent commander, the greatest soldier the Anglo- 
Saxon race ever produced, Ulysses S. Grant, and beside him 
our own 'Black Eagle,' the great volunteer soldier, John A. 
Logan. Others may be named, as John M. Palmer, John A. 
Rawlins and General Philip Sidney Post, but above all are the 
rank and file, the private soldier, 'the men behind the guns,' 
who, if individually not as well known as the commander, yet 
collectively their deeds shine like the myriad of stars forming 
the milky way, dimming the brilliancy of many of the great 
stars and planets of the firmament. 

''Glorious as were the deeds of our soldiery we must not 
overlook the patient wife or mother who through the silent 
watches of the dread nights pending an approaching battle 
prayed for the success of our arms and that the life of the son 
or husband be spared and they be permitted to return in 
safety to their loved home. 

"Illinois had many such patriotic mothers and wives and 
our country was blessed vsdth noble women. 

"With Mary Bickerdyke was Aunt Lizzie Aiken and Mary 
A. Livermore, all of this state, thus forming a trio emblemat- 
ical of deity, heaven born and noble representatives of the 
glorious w^omanhood of our God-given land of fair women and 
brave men. 

"P. H, Taylor of Ionia, Mich., some 90 years of age and 
an old friend, on receipt of a program of these exercises 
sends me the following appropriate verse: 

"There came into the army 

God's one best gift to man ; 
She was a very angel 

Assuaging grief and pain. 
In passing near a bedside, 

If she heard the words, 'My Wife,' 
She liuelt and caught the message 

E'er fled the spark of life. 

"That angel sent from heaven, 

She surely did her part ; 
She learned each soldier's sorrow, 

She cheered each soldier's heart ; 
She turned each tear-stained pillow. 

She bathed each aching head. 
She prayed beside the dying. 

She wept each soldier dead. 

"Then, comrades, see 'Our Mother,' 

Give her a good salute ; 
Though tenting on fame's camping ground 

She'll know a Free man's shout. 
In records there are written 

Names famous that you like. 
But none so well worth keeping 

As Mary Bickerdyke." 



APPENDIX. 175 

The unveiling exercises closed with a good, rousing chorus 
singing of the national hymn, ''America." An informal 
social time was enjoyed by a number of those present, subse- 
quent to the formal program, in meeting the national and de- 
partment commanders, ex-Governor Yates, the sculptress, Mrs. 
Kitson, and others. 

The organization of the Mother Bickerdyke association fol- 
lowed shortly after the death of the famous nurse. The mat- 
ter was taken up by the local W. E. C. and they were aided 
by the G. A. E. and other organizations of the city. At first 
it was decided to raise enough money to raise a monument in 
this city, but it was found that so large a sum could not be 
secured from local sources. However, about $300 was raised, 
which was expended for a tombstone in Linwood cemetery over 
her grave. 

In January, 1903, Eepresentative Wilfred Arnold and Sen- 
ator L. A. Townsend presented a request for an appropriation 
of $5,000 before the house and senate at' Springfield. The 
matter was received favorably and the appropriation was 
accordingly made. 

The services of the sculptress were then secured and the 
arrangement of matters of detail and the expenditure of the 
appropriation has been in the hands of the association. 

All credit is due to those whose patriotic sentiment fur- 
thered so praiseworthy an undertaking and the part taken by 
all of these persons will long be remembered in connection 
with the enterprise. The oflScers are: President, Mrs. Fannie 
Blazer; secretary, Mrs. Nellie Compton; corresponding secre- 
tary, Mrs. Mary Efner; treasurer, Mrs. Emily McCullough. — 
From the Galesburg WeeMy Mail of May 24, 1906. 

Mother Bickerdyke 's only living child, Mr. Hiram B. Bick- 
erdyke, of Ericson, Mont., was kept from attending this un- 
veiling by the illness of his wife. Other relatives of hers 
were there and were photographed sitting around the monu- 
ment the day of the ceremonies. 



APPENDIX 11. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The following is as complete a bibliography of material per- 
taining to Mother Bickerdyke as I have been able to make 
up to date. The two books, devoted wholly to her and the 
work she did, are ''Mary A. Bickerdyke — Mother," by Mrs. 
Julia A. Chase, written at the instigation of the Women's 
Eelief Corps of Kansas, published by the Journal Publishing 
House, Lawrence, Kan., in 1896, and "Mother Bickerdyke and 
the Soldiers," written by Mrs. Margaret B. Davis, published 
by the A. T. Dewey Fraternal Publishing Company, San 
Francisco, Cal. The others in the list give each a more or 



176 APPENDIX. 

less extended account of her life and work in connection with 
that of many others. They are: 

"My Story of the War." By Mary A. Livei-more. Published by 
A. D. Worthington & Co., Hartford, Conn., 1889. 

"Women of the War." By Frank Moore. 

"Our Army Nurses." By Mary A. G. Holland. Published in 
1895. 

"Boys in Blue." By Mrs. A. H. Hoge, of Chicago. 

"Women's Relief Corps." Kansas. 

"Under the Guns." By Mrs. Whittenmyer. 

"Woman's Wrongs." By Gail Hamilton. 

"Old Colony Memorial." Plymouth, Mass. 

"Our Branches." Chicago Sanitary Commission. 

An address by Mrs. .Julia A. Chase, in volume VII of Kansas 
History. 

The following newspapers give sketches of Mrs. Bickerdyke : 

The St. Louis (Mo.) Olohe -Democrat for May 23, 1897. 

Topeka (Kan.) Mail and Breeze, July 9, 1897. 

Kansas City Times, May 19, 1901, and November 14, 1901. 

Topeka (Kan.) Herald, November 19, 1901. 

Topeka (Kan.) State Journal, November 10, 1901. 

Russell (Kan.) Record, November 16, 1901, and at various other 
dates before this one. 

Russell (Kan.) Reformer, .July 16 and 23, 1897, and November 
16, 1901. 

New York Tribune, December 1, 1901. 

Milwaukee Sentinel, .Tune 9, 1897. 

Salina Union, September 17, 1903. 

A Gypsum City, Kan., paper, date unknown. 

Also a very interesting sketch of her was given in a Washington, 
D. C, magazine not long after the close of the war, written by 
Mrs. Mary Logan Tucker (a daughter of Gen. John A. Logan), who 
edited said magazine. 

Sketches of her have been given in a great many papers 
and periodicals that I cannot mention. At the time of the 
celebration of her eightieth birthday on July 17, 1897, and 
again at the time of her death, November 8, 1901, there was 
probably not a paper in Kansas that did not print interesting 
articles about her, and such articles were given in the promi- 
nent newspapers of many different states, especially in the 
western states, where she was best known and loved. 

In some of these sketches I have found help in the writing 
of my story, particularly so in the books ''My Story of the 
War, " " Boys in Blue, " * * Our Army Nurses, ' ' and * * Mother 
Bickerdyke and the Soldiers," for all of which, as well as for 
the help given me by old soldiers and other personal friends, 
I make glad and grateful acknowledgment. May the kind- 
ness shown me be returned in tenfold measure to each heart 
and home, and may none of us fail to learn the lessons taught 
by this beautiful life of love and service lived in our midst 
by our dear old Mother Bickerdyke. 



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